The Grandparents
by frazzledsoul
Summary: Luke and Lorelai ponder their newfound relationship status as they prepare to welcome the newest member of their family.. Mostly fluff, but there will be some drama, too.
1. Chapter 1

The fall of 2017 was turning out to be quite a revelation for Lorelai Gilmore-Danes.

She had never loved fall quite as much as she loved winter. Sure, there was the crispness wrought by the change of seasons and the concurrent excuse to shop for brightly colored sweaters and boots. There was the inevitable glut of Stars Hollow festivals to kick off the season and the culmination of wonder and excess otherwise known as Halloween. There were the crumbled cinnamon apple pies that she found just as often waiting for her on her kitchen table as she did cooling on the diner counter. There was the way the warm smells of pumpkin and cinnamon found its way into her clothes and hair and skin. And there was the way the shedding leaves in tones of brown and yellow and orange carpeted every available surface of her small town, fanning out and spreading anew every time a rambunctious child jumped into the hastily assembled piles collected by their parents. Once it had been her pint-sized little girl jumping into those leaves, squealing as they stuck to her pigtails and sweater: now those same squeals had been replaced by those of Rory's childhood friends as they wrecked those piles asunder.

Still, fall had never quite seemed as magical to her as the next season, when she could feel in her bones that the world was changing, that soon the clouds would put forth a magical veil of white over the world that would make everything soft and billowing and glossy. It was a season to be wrapped up in an otherworldly dream, to cover yourself in soft blankets and hot cocoa and leg warmers. It was the season where tired moms and kids and worn out business men turned into jubilant ice skaters and sled riders. Fall was cozy and enchanting in its own way, but it was merely a precursor to the marvelous spectacle that was winter, when everything that had seemed momentarily dark and foreboding in the months beforehand somehow dissipated in that ethereal glow that settled over the rest of her world with this final change of season.

However, this year fall had an entirely different meaning.

She was married. To _Luke_. The dream she once had held onto so fervently, the one that she had let destroy their relationship because she wanted it so badly, had finally come true. Lorelai had spent so much time working around that dream, building a life with him that could sustain them both, that she had never quite let herself admit how much she had still wanted it. In the past, she had chosen marriage over Luke, and forced them to endure the hardest year of their lives since they had come into each other's orbit so long ago. Once it was all over with, she had chosen Luke over marriage, knowing that what she wanted most of all was not to be separated from him again.

They had built a life together based not on labels or expectations but on their pure desire to simply be with each other. That life had its own pitfalls and shortcomings, same as any more conventional relationship, and working through what lines needed to be drawn so that they could maintain some sort of independence and still be together hadn't been easy. And nine years in, some of those pitfalls are seemed harder to manage than others. But it had been a good life, and both of them had finally found peace and stability within it.

The thing that Lorelai hadn't anticipated was that she would one day want more. She hadn't counted on coming to a point where she would wonder whether it was completely necessary to make those lines they had drawn seem like something that couldn't be adjusted or erased, that they had to remain etched in stone simply because she had decided that it would work better that way a long time ago. When she and Luke first got back together, April had been a fourteen-year-old girl with a very possessive mother who was still half angry at Luke for insisting on an equitable custody arrangement. Lorelai had learned the hard way not to meddle in too many of the big decisions: three stubborn adults arguing over a tearful teenage girl was not a situation that would bring peace to either of their houses. So, she had let Luke and Anna handle the hard stuff, and focused on what she considered her role to be as a quasi-stepmother, much of which had involved keeping Luke from murdering whatever questionable boyfriend was often seen hovering around the periphery of their home (not all of them teenagers). Those lines had made sense when April was still growing up, but did they even matter anymore now that she was a grown woman about to go off to grad school?

It was the same with her parents: knowing how much damage they had caused in the past, Lorelai had been reluctant to include Luke in every single interaction she had with them. That was only reinforced when her father kept pushing the issue of franchising Luke's, and had kept bringing up April's college education as a potential incentive for Luke to go ahead with it. Luke still ended up accompanying Lorelai to Friday Night Dinner about once a month, but Lorelai found it best that she limit their interactions beyond that to the occasional Gilmore function and holiday celebration. It was a balance that seemed to work for everyone involved: much of the thorny class issues that had come up in the past seemed to disappear, and the primary conflict usually revolved around Emily's disapproval of Lorelai's relationship status. But had all of those limits really been necessary, too? Luke had single-handedly paid for the parts of April's education that weren't covered by her scholarships, and was paying for grad school, too. He hadn't needed to change who he was to provide for his daughter, because taking care of the people he loved _was_ who he was. Lorelai loved him for that, and she sensed that her parents appreciated it, too: after the first few years, the issue seemed to completely go away, and Richard and Luke had even seemed to bond a little. The franchising stipulations had been written into Richard's will, but vacillating between accepting her life decisions and trying to steer them in a direction that was more acceptable to high society was a dance that her parents had perfected over the decades. As much as Lorelai had wanted to protect Luke from it, she wasn't surprised that they had fallen into the same cycle when it came to him. In the long run, if that was the worst that came of it, was creating this distance between Luke and her parents really something that needed to happen?

It had taken her a long time, but she eventually found out she could have all of the things she had wanted. She could have the life she was living with Luke, _and_ she could be married to him. She could make those things fit together in a way that made their life complete in a way that it hadn't been before.

It seemed so crazy to her that after all of these years adding those extra five letters to her names and putting both of those rings on her finger could make such a difference. Even the name change seemed to be something so radical yet so simple. She had never even contemplated it during his first attempt at matrimony, but this time it finally felt like something that fit her life. She could be Lorelai Gilmore, the woman who had built this wonderful life on her own, and still be wedded to Luke Danes, because that commitment was as big a part of her life as everything that had come before. She could be independent and be a wife, because she knew that Luke had unconditionally loved her for who she was as long as he had known her. He accepted her, and she accepted him, and now that acceptance was officially in print on her driver's license.

It felt good.


	2. Chapter 2

It felt good.

Of course, being married wasn't the only thing that made this year different.

The first grand milestone of her married life had been the one thing she hadn't been expecting for quite a while.

She and Luke were grandparents.

Lorelai had felt shocked, saddened, then briefly guilty for feeling saddened when Rory first sprung the news on her on the morning of her wedding day. She had hugged Rory and said she would support her with whatever she decided to do next. Rory had shrugged it off and said she was just adjusting to the news herself, and Lorelai sought to subdue her conflicted feelings in order to prepare for the day ahead of her. She had another wedding to get through, and the next parenting crisis would have to wait.

So she walked down the aisle towards Luke to marry him under the chuppah at last, feeling a joy and an adulation that had merely intensified since the whirlwind of the first wedding. They danced, gossiped (well, she gossiped while Luke pretended he knew what she was talking about), tasted all of Sookie's various cakes (Luke had mellowed enough for the occasion to allow for smashing cake in his face), and drank champagne while Lorelai let that other life event slip to the back of her mind. It felt so wonderful to be married to Luke, to let him spin her around the town square with his breath on her neck and his arm around her waist and to know that after all of this time that they were finally, finally married and that the dream that she had pretended she didn't want any more had come true.

She watched Luke chat with Jess and dance with April and then Rory and finally felt a peace come over her that was different than what she had ever felt before, even through all of the years that they had been together. She had been proud of the postmodern family that she and Luke had assembled but maybe now, with all of the kids grown and most of the troublesome financial and custody issues behind them, they could become something more natural. Maybe this was finally the event that would bring all of them closer in a way they hadn't been before. For the first time in a long time, Lorelai didn't have any fear or reservations about how she would they would be able to manage it or what kind of control she would have to exert over the situation to make things work. This time, they could finally move forth, and she was ready for it.

As well as for whoever else it might include now.

The subject didn't come up with Luke until later that night, as they lay ensconced in a corner of the Dragonfly, resting in a post-coital tangle of exhausted limbs. Rory had accompanied Emily back to Nantucket (to write and "think about things", she had assured her mother). Luke and Lorelai were set to embark on a brief honeymoon in the Adirondack mountains before resuming their lives with their new status attached.

"Rory's pregnant," Lorelai had whispered to him as she lay her head on his chest, sated with a combination of both bliss and carnal afterglow.

She felt him start, and then lay his head back down.

"Oh."

"Oh?" Lorelai asked, shifting to look him in the eye.

"Oh."

Lorelai rested her head back on his chest. "My thoughts exactly," she said, as she toyed with the hair on his chest.

"Who?"

Lorelai sighed. "Logan," she said softly. She had kept Rory's secret for a while, suspecting that Rory wouldn't want this information shared with the almost-stepfather who had almost embarrassed both of them with his gleeful pride at her accomplishments. She had finally told him the night of their engagement, when they had cuddled against each other in almost exactly the same position they were now.

"Oh," Luke responded.

"I should feel sad and disappointed but I don't, you know?" Lorelai mulled aloud. "Well, I do, because I didn't want her to be like me, to have to go through what I did, but it's different. She's not 16 or 26: she's 32. She got to do all the things she wanted, all the things I wanted for her. It isn't like it was with me."

She felt Luke's arm grow a little tighter around her. "It is different. She's got us."

Lorelai lifted her head towards his as his dancing blue gaze met hers. "She does."

Luke chuckled. "Guess she's staying with us for the duration now, huh?"

"I don't think she knows what she's going to do," Lorelai replied as she lay her head back down on his chest. "But if we do become grandparents, I think that quiet writing space she was planning on in Queens isn't really a reality anymore."

"Grandparents," Luke mused, almost as if he were testing the word out loud.

Lorelai smiled. Somehow the concept didn't seem as foreign or scary to her as she thought it would.

She and Luke had never done anything conventionally anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

_Okay, here's where I admit the story got away from me a little. There have been certain scenes playing out in my head since the revival aired, and I guess they're coming to life here._

 _To make things clear, the focus is going to primarily remain on Luke and Lorelai, but other characters are going to have to be involved to deal with their situation. I don't take a position in Rory's love triangle, but we are going to see some shenanigans on both sides._

 _As always, thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read._

In the end, Luke and Lorelai returned from their honeymoon to find Rory already at home, alert and organized and making plans for her future. It seemed that the pregnancy had given her the push she needed to finally put things right in her own life. She was going to embrace motherhood with all of the drive and dedication that she had once devoted to her education and career and finish her book along the way.

"I'm going to do this," Rory insisted. "I had the best role model and the best advantages in the world and I'm not going to let any of that go to waste. If you could raise me in a potting shed when you were a kid, I should be able to make a go of it with a college degree and a book deal."

Lorelai had smiled and hugged Rory, not wanting to push or discourage her. She didn't remind Rory that the "book deal" was a haphazard arrangement that she and Jess had agreed on in the early stages of hashing out concepts for the book. Jess ran a successful operation and Lorelai had seen enough of it over the years to know that he would live up to what he had promised. However, it was still a small company and there was no guarantee that it would bring enough profit to support Rory even temporarily, never mind her child.

She remembered what it had been like to be young and alone, feeling hectored and humiliated as she struggled through the trials of early motherhood. She never wanted Rory to feel like she had the slightest incentive to run away, and she felt that even more now. She had balked when Rory brought up the idea of moving to Queens again, remembering all of the midnight feedings and toddler temper tantrums and hastily assembled kindergarten outfits that had made her and Rory's early life seem overwhelming at even the best of times. She hadn't regretted a moment of it, but she knew that there was so much of Rory's early memories that didn't match her own. As optimistic as her daughter seemed now, the reality of her situation would soon come screaming to the forefront as soon as she had a newborn baby to supply the soundtrack.

Luke, as usual, had provided the ideal solution (and true to form, had claimed afterwards that it wasn't a big deal). He would fix up the apartment above the diner for Rory and her offspring, and Rory would stay with them for the first few weeks after the baby was born until she had a routine established and was confident that she could handle things on her own. Rory would work on finishing the book for the rest of her pregnancy and would reconsider her career options once it was put out on the market.

Things proceeded peacefully for the next few months: Rory had struggled with what to do about Logan, not wanting to disrupt his life or ask for any sort of relationship. Lorelai felt that it was probably Luke's constant presence that finally forced her to do the right thing: there was no way she could continue to live under the same roof as him and go ahead and repeat the same cycle of tragedy that had been visited upon him so long ago. They had talked about it often enough that Lorelai knew that Luke didn't approve of Rory continuing to hold out on him, but that he also didn't want to pressure her in any way or really hear that many details about their relationship.

"He's a bastard for doing what he did," Luke had testily maintained, "and I don't want to hear anyone defend him. But he needs to know."

Rory had flown out to see Logan once she had passed the twelve-week mark (Luke and Lorelai had both suspected that her worries about miscarriage had been more of an excuse than anything else) and came back visibly shaken: not because Logan had refused to be supportive, but because he had done the opposite. He was still living with Odette, but hadn't made any progress on wedding plans. Rory told Lorelai that he hadn't really seemed upset that his impending fatherhood would mean the end of his engagement, and had merely started talking about what kind of job he could get in the States.

"He didn't even seem to care," Rory had sobbed. "Here I was, telling him that his life as he knew it could be over, and all he could talk about was what he could do to get set up over here.

Lorelai was confused. "So you're upset because he wants to support you? Kid, I don't get it."

"Nooo," Rory protested. "Breaking up with Odette didn't even seem to matter to him. He just shrugged and said that he had to end things with her now. How could he be like that? How could he not even care about her?"

Lorelai felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for her own parents. Had she made this little sense thirty-four years ago as an unattached pregnant teenager insistent on maintaining that status?

 _Probably more so_ , she figured. _Oh, man._

"Rory," Lorelai said softly. "If he kept sleeping with you for all of those months, how attached could he have been to his fiancé? I mean, I don't suppose you ever asked him about it."

"You don't talk about those things!" Rory bawled.

"Well, I wouldn't know," Lorelai replied. For all of her relationship failings, she had _mostly_ avoided entangling herself with anyone who was already in a relationship with someone else. She had no idea how things worked when you had remained in that position for months and months,

"It's like he wants to pressure me into a relationship," Rory spit out. "I don't want that. I haven't wanted that for years. I only got a boyfriend on accident, and he just seemed to assume that's was what we called ourselves, even though we weren't exclusive and only saw each other four times a year. If I wanted that from Logan, I would have asked him for it."

Lorelai shook her head, trying to untangle the various strands of her daughter's increasingly complicated love life. She vaguely remembered the boyfriend from last year, but couldn't seem to recall his name. "Well, did he say that he wanted a relationship?"

"No, but I know that he does," Rory insisted. "And I'm not ready. I'm not. I don't want him to give up his whole life for me."

"It doesn't sound like he's doing it for _you_ ," Lorelai retorted.

The angry glare that Rory shot back at her left Lorelai even more puzzled than ever.

Luke and Lorelai didn't hear much about the Logan situation for a few weeks after that. Rory quickly changed the subject whenever Lorelai asked, and they were busy with other things: Jess was visiting at least twice a week to work with Rory on the book, and April was dropping in more and more often, which made Luke blissfully happy. Rory had always seemed a little at odds with April: she had been so nomadic for most of the past decade that visiting home had seemed less and less of a priority, so they had never really had an opportunity to spend much time together. April was completing much of her coursework at some top-quality labs in Hartford and often took the opportunity to crash in her childhood bedroom after a late night. It wasn't unusual for Lorelai to come in to have breakfast at the diner and see April and Rory tucked away in a corner booth deep in discussion on some arcane academic detail that neither she or Luke could begin to contemplate themselves, or to return home to see Rory, Jess, and April engaged in an animated debate over the sofa or kitchen table that they had commandeered for themselves.

It was almost as if she and Luke had finally found themselves at the head of a nuclear family of three argumentative brunette geniuses (well, if it was a twisted nuclear family where two of the siblings used to date each other). Jess still annoyed her sometimes, but he had long been accepted as an extended family member, and Lorelai felt that the presence of all three kids had brought her and Luke together in a way they hadn't been before. He had long since adapted to her binge watching and junk food ways, but now the kids frequently joined them, and were often present for festivals and family meals as well. The subject of what to do about the father of Rory's child seemed all but forgotten.

That all came to a crashing halt the day that Logan burst into the Crap Shack on Rory's heels, pointedly asking why she wasn't returning his calls.

Lorelai and April had been lounging on April's bed upstairs, sorting fabrics for baby clothes, and missed most of the action. By the time they had run downstairs, Luke had made his way in from the garage and was angrier than Lorelai had seen him in years.

"You don't talk to her like that!" he howled. "She's my stepdaughter, and I won't have it. If you've got something to say, you meet her in a neutral location and you have a sane discussion. You can't just barge in here."

"I've been trying –" Logan tried to argue.

"I. DON' ," Luke bellowed.

"Dad –" April began.

"It's okay, April," Luke responded. "He's leaving."

"I'm just saying that he has a point –"

"Thank you!" Logan responded. "I don't know how else I'm going to do this. I've got a right to make my case. I've got a right to see my kid –"

"Not now," Luke argued. "This isn't the time or the place. Later."

"She's made it clear there's not going to _be_ a later," Logan replied.

"Rory?" April asked.

"I can't deal with this right now!" Rory cried.

Lorelai had watched impassively from the stairs as all of this took place, but now she stepped towards them. "Logan, I think you should leave."

"She doesn't think I should!" Logan exclaimed, pointing to April.

"You're wrong about that," April retorted.

"Great," Logan muttered bitterly. "Another party against me here. Can't win."

"OUT," Luke demanded, as he picked Logan up by his coat lapel and shoved him towards the door. Lorelai heard the door slam behind them, and looked wearily at the scene around her. Rory sank down on the couch and started sobbing, and April rushed to her side. Outside the door, they could hear the screech of tires as Logan drove angrily away.


	4. Chapter 4

_And . . . I'm back._

 _Once again, this story is not quite going the way I thought it would. I sit down with an outline for exactly what is supposed to happen, and then I start writing and these characters have other ideas. So here we are._

 _I kind of want to stress that although it doesn't really seem like it, I don't intend to make Logan the villain here. He's frustrated and isn't handling it well, but he's actually trying to live up to his responsibilities. He's not Christopher 2.0., and you'll see that in the next couple of chapters._

 _So thanks to everyone who has read and commented so far, and I hope you enjoy this chapter._

Things slowly returned to normal in the wake of Logan's departure.

April led a still-weeping Rory into her bedroom and half-closed the door, Sensing that Rory needed to talk things out quietly for a few minutes, Lorelai decided to give her some space. She coaxed Paul Anka out of the corner where he had been hiding ever since the altercation began, and slowly carried him outside for a walk. Luke brewed up some of the tea he had gradually been converting Rory to for the past few months and April carried in some blueberry pie to aid in her commiseration. By the time Lorelai came back inside with the dog, the cries coming from the direction of Rory's bedroom had drifted into the strains of quiet conversation.

"Does she seem okay?" Lorelai asked Luke as he tidied up the kitchen.

He shrugged and gestured towards Rory's bedroom door. "As far as I can tell."

"Luke," Lorelai said softly, "what went on in there –"

Luke stiffened, his back to her. He straightened and continued to wipe down the counter. "I'm not sorry. I probably should be, but I'm not."

"Luke –"

He turned to face her. "He was threatening the girls. He was upsetting Rory. He came in her, uninvited, and was practically screaming at her. I can't have that. Even if it was just in front of one of our kids, but _both_ of them? No. It's not going to happen that way."

Lorelai smiled. "I'm not sorry, either." She crossed the kitchen to embrace him.

Luke fingered the ends of her curls as she wrapped her arms around him, feeling a wave of relief settle through his bones. "I thought you would be furious right about now."

Lorelai breathed him in, inhaling the warm scent of soap and coffee and French fries that seemed to permeate his flannel and spread to his skin to mix with the slightly musky odor that was uniquely _Luke_. She liked him best like this, the worn-in, comforting nature of him, knowing that no matter what, he would always be this solid bulk of strength and worry and protectiveness.

He would always do whatever he could to take care of them, no matter what.

"You were right," Luke heard her whisper into his shirt.

Luke leaned back to look at her. "That's not a phrase you use often."

Lorelai grinned. "Maybe marriage has softened me." She tightened her arms around him and lay her head back on his chest, reluctant to let go.

She heard Luke's chuckle reverberate through his chest. "I might regret this, but in a lot of ways I hope not."

Lorelai closed her eyes. "Probably unwise to get too used to it, then." She sighed happily. "You protected us. That's what matters to me."

"I'll always protect you. Especially from spoiled punks who don't know how to leave well enough alone."

Lorelai leaned back to look at him. "I know you don't really feel that way."

"If it's a choice between protecting Rory and taking his side of things, I do," Luke maintained.

Lorelai reached up to smooth the collar of his shirt. "I mean it, Luke. I know this has been hard for you, with Rory living here for all of these months and not knowing if she's going to do the right thing and let him know."

"She's Rory. I always knew she'd do the right thing."

Lorelai wryly smiled. The unflagging faith that Luke had in her daughter often exceeded hers these days.

They both turned their heads as April emerged out of Rory's room, clutching a mostly-empty pie platter and two dirty forks.

"How's she doing?" Luke asked.

"I think she's okay," April answered as she rinsed out the forks and transferred the remaining piece of pie to an empty Tupperware container. "I think it was mostly a shock, that's all."

"And how are _you_ doing?" Luke asked.

April shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the situation. She placed the pie platter and the forks in the dishwasher and shifted her way around her father and stepmother to put the remaining piece of pie back in the fridge. "I don't know. I've never seen the guy before."

She turned to face Luke and Lorelai. "Was he like that before? When they were in college? I mean, Rory said they lived together back then. If he acted like that the whole time –"

"I only met him a few times," Luke replied. "But I didn't see him act like he did tonight, no."

"Lorelai?"

Lorelai loosened her grip on Luke. "He could be a little spoiled and ungrateful, and I think he led Rory into some bad decisions –"

April nodded. "The yacht incident." She giggled and shuffled her feet.

Luke adjusted his cap. "I know what you're thinking of, and it's not funny."

"Stealing your own father's boat is _not_ the same as stealing a stranger's yacht," April argued. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Anyway, it was a long time ago. I was stupid when I was a kid, I know that."

"April, that incident went beyond –"

"I know," April replied. She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. "I know, Dad. And I know I've said it a million times, but I'm still sorry."

Luke's gaze met Lorelai's as he remembered that particular teenage misadventure. He and Lorelai had spent half the night driving around frantically searching for April and her latest ne'er-do-well boyfriend, only to receive the call at 1 AM that she had been pulled over by the police. He still credited Lorelai's influence for being the only thing that kept him from throttling April's boyfriend at the police station.

Lorelai toyed with the hair at the back of Luke's neck, knowing they were reliving the same memories. "Apology accepted," she responded.

"Good," April replied. "Now back to my question –"

Lorelai shifted to look April in the eye. "The answer's no," she said. "He wasn't like that. He had too much money to throw around and he made some mistakes, but he got better. He's not dangerous. I think he's just frustrated with the situation."

"Dad, _you_ were never like that," April countered. "You didn't even find out about me until I was twelve, and I came to you. I know you were angry with Mom, but I never saw that kind of petulant behavior from you. Isn't he almost as old as you were then?"

Luke ran his hand over his stubble, pondering the correct way to respond to this. He wasn't often reminded of the year when his worst failings, with both April and Lorelai, had kept defeating him over and over. He had been stupid and careless with both of them, and had lost Lorelai in the process. He never regretted the time he had spent with April, but sometimes it seemed like every single step he had taken forward in the years since had been an attempt to avoid fucking up quite as badly as he had that year.

Sometimes he was far less successful at it than he wanted to be. This past year had been a prime example.

He half expected Lorelai to stiffen next to him and pull away, pained by the reminder of what his mistakes had cost her, but she didn't. She put her arm back around his waist and pulled him closer.

"April, I messed up on a lot of things back then," Luke began. "I know you don't know all the details of it, and I'm grateful for that, but I did confront your mom. I don't regret that, and I don't regret having to go to court so that I could continue to see you. But I do wish we had settled things sooner, and I don't know what it would have looked like if I had tried to do that."

"Did you act like Logan did when you went to see Mom? I mean, I don't think she has the physical strength to throw you out if she needed to. I can't see you being like that, Dad."

"No," Luke admitted. 'I didn't. I went to your house and had a calm discussion with your mother. I told her I deserved to be a part of your life. Then I left. That was all. It's because I know how those conversations are supposed to go that I know that Logan handled this wrong."

"But if you had tried to go to her earlier and explain things to her –"

Luke sighed. "I would have hoped that Lorelai and I could have sat down with your mother and discussed our situation like adults." He turned to gaze at Lorelai. "That's what _should_ have happened."

Lorelai rubbed the small of his back, feeling amazed for the millionth time that they had somehow been able to heal all the hurt they'd caused each other so long ago.

"I still don't agree with what she's doing," April said. "I mean, if she continues with it and doesn't allow him to see the baby once it's actually here. He was a jerk tonight but if he's not dangerous –" She ran her fingers over the side of the table. "It doesn't seem right. Especially with everything Dad and I went through not knowing each other for so long."

"It's not," Lorelai agreed. "You're definitely not alone in thinking that."

"Dad?"

Luke sighed. "Your stepmother's right. I think we probably need to encourage some peace talks between the two of them. It's just not going to happen tonight."

Lorelai swatted at Luke. "That's the first time you've used that word!"

"What word?"

" _Stepmother._ "

"What part of what I just said isn't accurate?"

"I just feel old and _crone_ like now."

"Lorelai –"

"I need a witch's hat. And a cauldron. And maybe stop moisturizing so I can grow a few warts –"

"Enough."

"Well, I can see where this is going," April interjected. She stood up. "I'm going to bed. Please resume the foreplay when I'm out of earshot, okay?"

"You better hurry upstairs, kid!" Lorelai called out as April climbed the stairs.

"Night, Dad!" April called back, pointedly ignoring Lorelai.

"Night, April," Luke called out.

He rubbed Lorelai's back as April gradually retreated from view. "She's really grown up, hasn't she?"

"Yeah," Lorelai agreed. "It wasn't so long ago that you were throwing _her_ boyfriends out of this house."

"I thought those days were long behind us," Luke admitted.

"Well, it helped sharpen your skills for tonight," Lorelai retorted. "Maybe all of those terrible boyfriends brought us to this moment in time, so that you could throw your stepdaughter's baby daddy out of the house –"

"Mom?" Rory weakly called from her bedroom.

"I'll be right there!" Lorelai called back as she let go of Luke. "It was the right thing," she reminded him. "Not forever, but for tonight. It was."

Luke grinned and picked up the washcloth he had discarded earlier. "Glad to see we're on the same page."

"MOM!" Rory called out impatiently.

Lorelai trotted off to Rory's bedroom, hoping that she could get these peace talks started sooner rather than later.


	5. Chapter 5

_Okay, so I took a really long hiatus with this one. When my characters were in mid conversation!_

 _I actually planned to finish this up in December (ha!) but I got sidetracked by the emotional roller coaster that was Boundaries and then randomly decided to venture out into Literati land with A Simple Twist Of Fate. But now I'm ready to continue with Rory and her baby daddy shenanigans, as Luke and Lorelai prepare for the next stage of their lives._

 _This chapter is very Rory-heavy, but it's mostly background to what's going to happen next, so hang in there with me. I'll try to avoid going so long without an update in the future._

 _One thing I do want to point out: the way I write Rory in this story is not necessarily the way I would write her otherwise, particularly when it comes to what exactly was going on in her mind during AYITL. So this is one interpretation, but it isn't necessarily the only one._

 _As always, I welcome your comments and reviews at any time._

Lorelai closed the door to Rory's bedroom and felt her heart fall a little.

Rory seemed so small and vulnerable as she sat slumped against the wall, rubbing her newly discernible bump and gazing up at Lorelai with red-rimmed eyes.

She didn't look like a grown woman who was half responsible for inflicting the night's overwrought emotional drama on her parents. She looked like the child that Lorelai had been once, confused and overwhelmed by responsibilities that she was not even beginning to know how to handle. Lorelai remembered what it what felt like to be that child once, determined to embrace motherhood despite the odds and trying not to acknowledge how truly terrified she was.

And yet Lorelai was also reminded what it must have felt like to be her mother so long ago, fearful for her daughter's future and desperately wanting to steer her on the right path.

Lorelai inwardly shuddered and sat down next to Rory on the bed.

"So that was a pretty impressive performance the father of your child put on tonight, huh?"

Rory stared at her hands, seeming more drawn than ever. "I guess."

"Rory –"

Rory yanked her head up and focused on Lorelai. "I don't want to see him again."

Lorelai shifted her position on the bed. "That's an understandable position right now."

"I know there's a _but_ coming," Rory retorted.

"Rory, I'm trying to support you here," Lorelai reminded her. She reached out for Rory's hand. "Really."

"I didn't realize how _hard_ this would be," Rory said, her voice cracking. "Maybe it's better that he acted like this tonight. Maybe I can just get a restraining order and be done with it."

Lorelai's heart sank even futher.

She wondered how easily they had gotten to such a despised Jerry Springer moment. She wondered why she couldn't come up with a more current pop culture reference for their situation right now in her head. She wondered how she seemed to have aged so quickly into her new role in life in a single night.

Most of all, she wondered how much more Rory would hate her in the next few minutes when she had to point out how truly ridiculous she was being.

Lorelai ran her thumb over the top of Rory's hand, feeling her wedding ring push the inside of her daughter's palm through the skin.

"I don't think that's the right way to resolve this," she told Rory softly.

Rory sharply removed her hand and placed it back on her stomach. "Is that what Luke thinks?"

"It's not just Luke."

"Is it even Luke at _all_?" Rory angrily asked. "He protected me tonight. He protected April. He's on my side in this."

"Luke is on your side when it comes to keeping Logan away from you when he can't control himself," Lorelai responded. "And the way he acted tonight isn't appropriate. I don't want him around you or the baby if that's the way he's going to behave. But I think we both know that probably isn't how he normally acts."

Rory opened her mouth, then closed it.

"Is that what he's usually like, Rory?"

"No," Rory admitted. "I wouldn't have been with him if he was."

Lorelai smiled.

"Luke and I will always protect you first, but there's another person involved in this situation, and we don't want to see you do something you regret," Lorelai explained. "I know that you know why the other two people in this house feel strongly about this."

Rory folded her arms across her chest. "That's what April said."

"April's right," Lorelai replied. "She and Luke lost out on a lot because April's mother thought it would be easier for everyone if she just kept him away from her."

Rory tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I don't –"

Lorelai gestured at Rory to continue.

"I don't know how to do it," Rory said softly.

"No one knows how to do these things right away," Lorelai told her. "Parenthoood is a process, Rory. We all learn as we go."

"I don't mean that," Lorelai replied. "I mean that I could figure out the single mom thing. I watched you do it with me, and I know I could do it for this baby. But I don't know how to _share_ her, Mom. I don't know how to deal with custody and stepmothers and visitation arrangements and I keep thinking how everything went all wrong at first with you and Luke and April –"

Lorelai shifted awkwardly on the bed next to Rory. She thought back on everything that had doomed her relationship with Luke so many years ago, and all of the stupid mistakes made by both of them that could have been so easily avoided. Repairing the damage that they had caused to each other had been a lot harder than integrating April into their lives had ever been.

She never wanted Rory to go through anything that had been as difficult as that year had been.

Rory caught her breath and continued. "We never had to deal with that, Mom. Dad left us alone. I missed him not being around, but I also know that after everything else that happened, things were better because he wasn't there. I thought Logan would do the same thing. I was ready for that."

Rory wearily rubbed her eyes as Lorelai handed her a box of Kleenex.

"He ruined his life for me, Mom," Rory said softly, choking back her sobs. "I didn't want him to do that. I wanted him to go on with his life and act like nothing had happened. I wanted him to be the bad guy that we barely remembered."

Lorelai reached for Rory's hand again. "Logan isn't really that guy, though, is he?"

"No," Rory admitted. "I feel so guilty about everything, Mom. I never should have let myself get involved in this situation. I still don't know why I did it. I don't know if it was because I was lonely or desperate or because I loved Logan so much that I forgot about all of those other things. I have no idea what my feelings for him are. And if he's going to be there every day, if he's in the delivery room, if we're deciding on preschools and pediatricians and – " She stopped and looked up at Lorelai. "It's just easier if he's not there."

Lorelai straightened and tucked her leg up behind her on the bed. "Rory, I'm going to tell you something that I should have told you when you were growing up. I never really got around to it because, well – for a long time I didn't know how I felt about it."

Rory stared at her mother, listening expectedly.

"It wasn't my choice for your dad not to be a bigger part of your life," Lorelai continued. "I didn't marry him because he wasn't ready, and I brought you to Stars Hollow because we needed to make a life on our own. In a lot of ways, that was easier for all of us. It kept my feelings for him bottled up so I didn't have to commit to anyone else, and that was what I needed to put you first. But I never kept him away, Rory. It was his choice to do that."

"Dad doesn't see it that way," Rory said softly.

Lorelai stiffened. "Whatever is between you and your dad doesn't have anything to do with me anymore," she reminded Rory. "But I'm not terribly surprised. I never wanted you to hate him, Rory. I wanted you to have a good opinion of him. I always kept hoping he would try to do right by you, and I know that he tried sometimes. But I couldn't make him do the things that he needed to do."

"I know," Rory replied. "I went to see him right after I found out I was pregnant. I tried to tell him all of these things, Mom. He wouldn't budge."

"I don't think Logan is quite the same person your father is," Lorelai said quietly. "I know that may make things seem a lot more confusing, but it's a good thing, kid."

Rory sniffled. "I know." She let her gaze meet Lorelai's. "I still haven't told Dad yet," she admitted.

"I think you should," Lorelai told her.

"But you and Luke –"

Lorelai bit her lip, remembering the arrangement she had made with Luke a decade ago regarding how they would deal with Christopher.

"Luke and I will talk about it," she assured Rory. "We'll handle it. No fistfights in the hospital waiting room. I promise."

Rory smiled. "Good," she replied. "I'm glad Luke and April were here tonight," she added.

"You two are getting to be pretty close," Lorelai remarked.

"I like her," Rory replied. "I'm kind of sorry we didn't spend more time together sooner. And I'm still glad that Luke threw him out."

Lorelai squeezed Rory's hand. "Me too," she admitted.

"I still don't know how to do all of this," Rory said. "Even the single mom part – I had this clear picture in my head but at this point it's not seeming terribly realistic."

"Hey," Lorelai interjected. "You have me. The greatest single mom in the history of the universe."

"And clearly the most modest one," Rory retorted.

"One of my many wonderful qualities," Lorelai replied. "And I didn't just raise you. I helped Luke raise April. I know what it's like to have to share a kid and know how to figure out what everyone's roles are. Maybe Luke and I made a mess of things at first, but we figured it out eventually."

"I think things have changed just a little," Rory remarked. "But it doesn't matter. I don't know any single moms anymore. Almost everyone I know is married and settled and already a parent. Lane. Dean. Even Paris. I'm _behind_ , Mom. I feel like I'm never going to learn what I need to know in time."

"Paris is a single mom," Lorelai reminded her.

"Not anymore," Rory corrected her. "She finally got back together with Doyle and they moved to a smaller place on the Upper West Side."

"When did that happen?"

"September." Rory smiled. "She thought she was pregnant and I guess it brought them back together, even though she wasn't. It might have been fun to be pregnant together, actually."

Lorelai shuddered. "I don't think so. But that is some grade-A gossip you've been keeping from me. Why didn't you say anything?"

"It happened when we weren't speaking to each other," Rory explained.. "And since then –" She shrugged. "I thought it might upset you to bring it up. Since the surrogacy didn't work out."

"Oh, sweetie."

"I've thought about it a little," Rory continued. "That you might feel a little weird, with me having a baby when it didn't work out for you."

"That's a long retired topic," Lorelai insisted. "Rory, I've already been through menopause. Any baby I had with Luke wouldn't even technically have been mine."

"You thought about it, though."

"Yes, I thought about it," Lorelai replied. "Your grandfather had died, you were in London, April was gone, even Sookie had ditched me –" Lorelai paused, trying to gather her thoughts. "All I had was Luke, and I kept thinking that I had disappointed him somehow because he had wanted it once. I thought that there was something missing from our life, and that would fix it, but it wasn't it."

"You wanted to get married."

Lorelai grinned, thinking about how miraculous it was that her life had worked out this way. "I did. It took me a long time to realize it, but I'm glad I finally did."

"So it wasn't just because Luke said no?" Rory asked.

"No," Lorelai insisted again. "Luke and I are happy the way that we are right now. The only baby we want to bring into our lives is _yours_."

Rory lightly rubbed her stomach. "I wish I had more time to deal with the Logan stuff, Mom. I know you're right, I just can't – I need more time before I can really talk to him again."

"You don't have time," Lorelai remarked. "Rory, it's almost February. This baby is due in late June."

"Mom, I can't –"

"Rory, I know how difficult this is for you," Lorelai began. "I know it's not really something you can deal with tonight. But this is only the beginning. This is what being a parent is. You don't run away from the hard stuff. You face each challenge as it comes and deal with it. That's how you know you're ready for the next one."

"Maybe I just need a few days," Rory suggested.

"That's fair," Lorelai conceded. "And Luke and I will help you when it comes to dealing with Logan. You aren't alone for any of this, kid."

Rory reached for Lorelai's hand again. "I know," she assured her mother. "And thank you."


	6. Chapter 6

_So, the day after SuperBowl Sunday and the tragic loss of Jack Pearson on_ _ **This Is Us**_ _(I'm still crying inside) is the perfect time for some Luke/Lorelai baby talk, right?_

 _I initially intended this story to be solely about Luke and Lorelai's baby issues, and we partly hash them out a little here. I tried to stay close to canon, even the canon that isn't popular. And for me, canon as portrayed in the revival made it clear that Luke and Lorelai built their life around each other, not any potential children that they might have. I tried to explain it in a way that was still positive, but I don't know if I succeeded._

 _I've also used the excuse for Luke's absence from April's graduations that I used in_ _ **The Morning After.**_ _I'm still debating if I want to use the rest of the canon from that story, but for now just the graduation plot remains intact._

 _So read, enjoy, and please leave a review if you so desire._

By the time Lorelai left Rory's bedroom that night, the downstairs lights had been turned off and the house appeared to have been put to bed for the night. The only sound she could hear from the lower level of the house was the dishwasher running through its cycle in the kitchen.

Lorelai trotted upstairs, hoping that Luke was still awake. She found him resting against the pillows in his T-shirt and sweatpants, reading his battered copy of _The Man In The High Castle_ for what was surely the thousandth time.

She promptly attacked him, knocking his book to the floor and pushing the covers to the edge of the bed.

"What is this?" he managed between kisses, letting his hands roam over her back.

"I have to thank you," Lorelai purred as she attacked his neck.

Luke fought the impulse to grab her and pin her on the bed beneath him. "April's spending the night," he reminded her, trying to let his common sense win over the Lorelai-induced fog that was clouding his brain.

Lorelai paused and focused on him, her blue eyes taking on that mischievous spark that he couldn't resist. "She has headphones stashed at top of the closet," Lorelai responded before paralyzing him with another kiss.

"You make me crazy," Luke rasped as she attacked his neck again.

Lorelai paused and rubbed his shoulder enticingly. "Crazy good?"

Luke flipped her over, focusing his intense gaze on hers. "Always good," he assured her as he kissed her, reaching down to unfasten the button on her jeans.

Later, she lay curled up on his chest, both of them warm and satisfied as she ran her finger over his heated skin.

Luke was always grateful for moments like this, when they lay cuddled up in the afterglow and there was nothing else in the world except for the two of them. After so many years together, he was amazed that they still had the ability to steal what peace and calm they could from the world and find a space where nothing else mattered.

"My big, strong, manly protector," Lorelai murmured as she ran her fingers over the smattering of hair on his chest.

Luke chuckled and continued to thread his fingers through her hair. "Glad to oblige."

"Rory wants to tell Christopher about the baby," Lorelai said softly.

Luke's hand stiffened, and Lorelai shifted her position to look him in the eye.

"Is that why you pounced on me tonight?" he asked her, feeling a little hurt.

"You pounced on me for no reason the night before last," Lorelai reminded him.

"You seemed to like it. Besides, you were wearing that dress –"

"What dress?" she asked. She had been at the end of her laundry run yesterday, and couldn't even remember what she had been wearing two days ago.

Luke grinned, his hurt easily scattering away. "The black one with the stars."

"That's all it takes?"

"It doesn't even take that, Lorelai," Luke insisted, threading his fingers through her hair again. "You should know that by now."

Lorelai felt her heart swell once again, and reached up to lightly kiss him on the lips.

"I do," she said gently before resuming her comfort position on his chest.

"Good," Luke replied.

They were once again bathed in blissful silence, and Lorelai let a moment pass before she spoke.

"I did love it," she said softly. "I just had a reason for a repeat performance tonight, Luke, that's all. I wanted to show you how much I appreciated everything you did for us tonight."

"Second nature for me," Luke said, and Lorelai turned her head to look into his eyes. "I do appreciate the reward, though."

"Things are going to have to change, Luke," Lorelai reminded him.

'It's been ten years," Luke told her, his gaze steady and trusting. "I'm not threatened by him. Besides, we always said things would change if Rory got married or had a baby, right?"

"I just wish we could have warmed up to it more," Lorelai replied.

"I'm not like I used to be," Luke insisted. "When we made that arrangement all those years ago, I didn't know if I could believe that things could be just about Rory when it came to him. Now I do."

"We haven't even seen him in person for six years," Lorelai said, piecing together the info in her mind. "Not since Rory got that journalism award in New York."

Luke brushed her hair away from her face. "It's not a big deal to me," he assured her. "Really."

"I don't expect him to be around much," Lorelai told him. "I'm not sure Rory even keeps in touch with him that often, or she wouldn't have waited so long. But when it comes to big things, like the birth, he might be involved. I just need to know that you're prepared for that."

"I am," Luke said with resolve. "Are you?"

Lorelai smiled. "I am, too," she assured him. She lay her head back on his chest, and they once again retreated into shared silence.

"Rory mentioned some other stuff, too," she said after a few minutes had passed.

"Hmm?"

"The surrogacy," Lorelai continued, almost wanting to keep the topic from bubbling up again, but knowing she would regret it if she did.

"I thought we agreed to let it drop," Luke said softly.

"I –"

Lorelai shifted to look up at him while Luke looked at her questionably.

"I asked you if you agreed with me and you said that you did," Luke continued testily. "I asked you later on that night if you were really okay with not continuing on with it and you said yes. Were you –"

"I wasn't going to force you to do something if you weren't comfortable with it," Lorelai maintained.

"But how did _you_ feel about it?"

"I wasn't lying to you," Lorelai insisted. "I didn't – I didn't want a baby."

She felt like the confession had been ripped out of her chest, and even now she felt a little guilty about saying the words out loud.

Lorelai lay her head back down on Luke's chest, feeling more emotionally spent than she had anticipated.

"Lorelai –" Luke began.

"I pushed for it because I thought you wanted it," Lorelai said tearily. "I couldn't stand that you'd committed yourself to me, to what I wanted, and I never even asked you about it."

She could feel Luke breathing softly, his chest rising up and down as she buried her face in it.

Steady and strong, protecting her, loving her unconditionally. For so long, that had been all that she wanted, more than anything else in the world. She'd put up so many barriers, so many defenses, just to make sure she wouldn't lose it, that she wouldn't lose him.

She still regretted what that might have cost them.

"I just wanted _you_ , Lorelai," Luke confessed.

Lorelai sighed happily, her heart again swelling to the point where she thought it might burst.

"You weren't afraid to get married," she reminded him. "I was."

Luke reached out to tip her chin up towards him, and Lorelai rolled over to look at him.

"I never regretted a single moment with you," he told her. "You know that. You knew that before any of this started."

"But five years ago –"

"It didn't matter as much as you and me," Luke insisted. "Nothing has mattered as much as you and me for a very long time. I learned that the hard way."

Lorelai smiled sadly, knowing the painful reality of that statement. A reality that was thankfully long, long behind them.

"I wanted things to change," she told him. "I wanted to get married, but I was so scared of messing up what we had. I thought a baby would – that it would change things, that it would help us take that leap that was holding me back. But it wasn't the right way to do it."

"No, it wasn't," Luke agreed. "I mean, if things had been different –"

Now it was Lorelai's turn to look at him questionably.

"If it had happened on its own, I wouldn't have felt the same," Luke continued. "But at our age, taking all of these extra steps to get a kid – I just don't think it was a good idea. And especially not the way Paris wanted us to do it."

"You didn't actually have to sleep with those women," Lorelai replied, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"I figured that part out," Luke said softly. "But it wasn't just that. She was parading those girls around, girls that are barely older than April is, and treating them like cattle. I didn't like it. I kept thinking of how their parents would feel. It wasn't right."

"You didn't want to adopt a kid, either," Lorelai reminded him. "You said no to that first."

"I didn't think taking in a kid for the reasons that we were doing it was right, either," Luke said. "Those kids deserved a parent who wanted them for them, not to accomplish some sort of relationship goal for us. Our reasons – they weren't the right reasons for wanting a kid."

"I just feel sorry for all of the stuff that you missed," Lorelai replied sadly.

"I know you do," Luke told her. "And I'll always feel a little sad about missing those early years with April. But I did get to raise her, and I got plenty of those moments with her, and with Rory, and with Jess. I didn't get to go to any of April's graduations because the first time she decided it wasn't worth the tantrum her mother was throwing at the time, and the second time she decided she would rather tag along on that trip to Guatemala instead. Who's to say that any of those other experiences with another kid would have worked out the way we planned?"

"You wanted it once, though, Luke," Lorelai reminded him.

"I did," Luke affirmed. "But then I actually became a father. Things were a lot harder in real life than I thought they would be. It wasn't the perfect picture that I had in my mind."

Lorelai remained silent, knowing that he was right.

"You did all of this the hard way with Rory, too," Luke continued. "I know you know it's always more complicated than you think it's going to be."

Lorelai smiled. "Do you miss not doing the graduation thing with April?"

"In theory, yes," Luke replied. "In reality, no. I spent a week with my girl in Alaska watching whale hunters throw each other up in the air like circus performers. I wouldn't trade that time with her for anything."

Lorelai rubbed his shoulder affectionately. "I know you wouldn't."

"Besides we got some of the conventional stuff with Doula and Steve and Kwan," Luke said. "I'd like to think we did a little good there. We've never run out of parenting experiences. Not by a long shot."

"So we didn't miss anything?"

Luke smiled. "I don't think we did."

Lorelai lay her head back down on his chest, content to let his heartbeat lull her to sleep and chase away the thoughts still reverberating around in her head.

She was almost there when something else occurred to her.

"Luke?" she asked, hoping he wasn't quite asleep yet.

"Yeah?" he said drowsily.

"What if the reason I stopped getting my period two years ago wasn't because my lady parts were shutting down? What if it was because I was pregnant?"

"That's a big what if," Luke replied.

"Would you have been happy?" Lorelai pressed.

Luke's arms grew a little tighter around her. "I would have been terrified," he admitted.

Lorelai shifted her head to look at him.

Luke's drowsy blues eyes peered at her from behind his long lashes. "I would have been more worried about you surviving than anything else," he rasped, his voice tinged with fear as well as exhaustion.

Lorelai reached up to run her hand across his cheek. "Nothing matters as much as you and me, huh?"

Luke bent his head to kiss the side of her forehead.

"Not as far as I'm concerned."


	7. Chapter 7

_Okay, this chapter is far longer than I expected, and it covers a lot of ground. I wanted to wrap up this plot thread with Logan and Rory, but I've had to incorporate a lot of Gilmore/Danes family history in order to do so. The canon that's described in **The Morning After** and **The Dynastic Plan** is referenced here, as well as the follow-up to **The Morning After** that I may write someday. So, if you see any references to stuff that didn't happen on the show as you remember it: well, it could have happened! Maybe. Well, according to me, at least._

 _I've tried to strike a plausible balance here with pointing out the stuff that was horrible about Logan's behavior and also giving him a chance to explain himself. I don't see him as a villain in this situation. I know it's kind of crazy for Luke and Lorelai to have this much involvement in Rory's baby daddy woes, but I believe that she would need a lot of assistance to avoid repeating that full-circle nonsense. Like most post AYITL fanfic writers, I'm trying to put my own version out there that keeps that from happening in quite the same way._

 _Any reviews or comments are always welcome._

The few days that Rory had requested to herself before she was ready to talk to Logan again quickly stretched to a week. Then a week and a half. It wasn't until Rory started talking about her upcoming mid-pregnancy sonogram – and ensuing gender reveal – that Lorelai realized that the two-week mark had passed without her or Luke noticing.

It had been easy to let this topic go on the back burner again. Sookie had come back to town to complete the paperwork needed to formally dissolve their partnership and marvel over Rory's (still barely noticeable) baby bump, and Lorelai began making more concrete plans with Michel to start working on the second property. The sale had gone through in early January, but construction still looked to be delayed until early April. Lorelai wanted to be slightly more prepared for unexpected problems than she had been thirteen years ago.

Luke was similarly distracted. Rory couldn't yet decide if she merely wanted to set up the baby's room in the space that Jess and April had once occupied or if she wanted Luke to expand the apartment to give herself a little more privacy. As with all baby-related decisions, it was decided that this one could wait a few more weeks – at this point, most decisions looked to be delayed until after the gender reveal. Luke shrugged it off and continued to work on the crib he was crafting in his spare time. Jess and April passed in and out of the house, and life went on as usual, for the most part.

The one decision that Rory didn't put off was finally telling her father about her pregnancy. She drove to Boston a few days after the confrontation with Logan to deliver the news in person. Lorelai was waiting for her at the gazebo when she returned with a thermos of hot tea and a fresh platter of pie.

"How was it?" she asked tentatively as Rory lowered herself to the steps and reached for the thermos.

"It was fine," Rory responded as she tore off the top of the pie container and dug into the pie.

"Rory –"

"I don't know what to say," Rory replied in between bites. "It's, you know . . . Dad."

"I'm not sure what that means," Lorelai said with honesty.

Rory sighed. "We sat. We talked. He was surprised. He asked why I waited so long to tell him. He wanted to know when I was due. He offered money."

"Were you expecting something else?"

Rory put her fork down. "Maybe. I don't know. I was thinking after all of this time – he might try harder. He might offer something else. I'm not sure what I really wanted him to say or do, but –" Rory picked her fork back up and began eating again. "I don't know."

"Did he say he wanted to be involved?" Lorelai asked gingerly.

"No." Rory swirled the remaining pie crumbs around on the platter. "I mean, maybe that's why I'm frustrated. You and Luke and Jess and April are doing all of these things, _tangible things_ , for me and the baby, things that mean more than money, and I think I wanted something like that from him. But that isn't really how he's wired, is it?"

Lorelai rubbed her daughter's shoulder. "I don't think so."

Rory put the top of the pie container back on top of the platter, leaving her mother a single sliver of pie, and took a sip of tea from her thermos. "It's just a disappointment, I guess."

"Well, Rory, your dad is your dad," Lorelai stated plainly. "There's not much to expect there except for well, not being able to expect much." She paused and looked Rory in the eye. "But you do know that Luke and I will always be here for you, no matter what, right?"

Rory's gaze met her mother's. "I do," she said softly.

Lorelai nodded. "Good." She opened the pie container and began to consume the remaining piece of pie as Rory's eyes remained fixed on the night sky.

"What about your grandmother?" Lorelai said after a few minutes, having obliterated all traces of raspberry deliciousness from the pie platter.

Rory didn't seem to hear her.

"Rory? Your grandmother?"

"I want to wait until after I know for sure that it's a girl," Rory said flatly, still gazing at the stars scattered far above them.

Lorelai felt that sinking feeling in her gut that always resurfaced when the subject of keeping secrets from her parents came up. She really shouldn't have let this one go on so long – but then again, it wasn't her decision to make.

"And Logan –"

"Not right now."

"Did you change your -"

"I'm going to talk to him," Rory replied, her voice taking on a sharper edge. "Before I deal with Grandma, and before the sonogram. But not tonight. Not for a few more days."

Lorelai gulped down her disapproval and stared off into the distance, wondering whether the incoming storm from Nantucket would be ferocious enough to drown the rest of Stars Hollow.

* * *

One week later, Lorelai sat at the diner counter keeping her husband company as Rory worked on her laptop at a nearby table.

"Do you notice a pattern?" she whispered to Luke as he wiped the counter.

"Not really," Luke dryly replied, putting his rag down and reaching over to replenish his cash drawer.

"She keeps hanging up on every third call," Lorelai insisted. "Watch."

Luke sighed impatiently and shut the drawer, inching closer to Lorelai as he waited for this latest drama to play out.

Rory busily typed away on keyboard until her phone buzzed. She picked it up, smiled, and started chatting animatedly.

"Jess," Lorelai whispered.

Sure enough, the conversation drifting over from Rory's table seemed mostly focused on book edits and Philadelphia food trucks.

Rory hung up after a few minutes and returned to her work.

"So?" Luke asked, not understanding what the point was.

"Just keep paying attention."

Rory's phone buzzed again and she picked it up.

"Either Lane or Paris," Lorelai said softly.

Rory seemed to be saying something about donations and the quality of DC music clubs.

"Lorelai, I'm not sure –"

"Just stay with me on this. You'll see."

"Ookay," Luke replied unsurely, putting his elbows on the counter.

Rory's phone buzzed again after another minute. She picked it up, angrily clicked a few icons, and slammed it back down on the table.

The phone buzzed again. Rory repeated the action.

Lorelai looked at Luke expectedly. He seemed to be intrigued.

Rory's phone buzzed a third time.

She picked it up and loudly said, "I don't feel like talking to you right now."

Luke and Lorelai tried to listen to her side of the conversation, having given up all pretense of pretending not to eavesdrop.

"Well, then e-mail me –"

"I'm being more than fair. _You're_ not being fair."

"Fine."

Rory slid the phone back in her purse and began to pack up her belongings. Lorelai turned her attention to her almost-empty cup of coffee as the only other customer in the diner strolled up to the counter to pay his bill.

"Going home, kid?" Lorelai asked as Rory wearily crossed over to her stool.

"Yeah," Rory said, pausing in front of the counter and shifting her laptop bag from one arm to the other. "It's been a long day."

"We'll be home in an hour or so," Lorelai replied. Rory nodded and made her way toward the door.

Luke strolled across the floor and flipped the sign to CLOSED as soon as the door shut behind her.

"That last one was _Logan_ ," Lorelai clarified as she hauled herself up from her seat and joined Luke in cleaning up the detritus from the dirty tables.

"Figured out that part," Luke replied as he brought a handful of dirty plates over to the kitchen.

"She's _lying_ to us, Luke."

"Not entirely," Luke said as he began to wash the plates by hand and handed them to Lorelai to dry.

"Not entirely? Luke, she's been saying for weeks that she just wasn't ready to talk to him –"

"She's not talking to him," Luke pointed out as he stacked the clean dishes back in the cabinet. "He calls, she refuses to talk, tells him she'll talk to him later. Isn't that what you wanted to show me?"

"Well, yeah."

Luke crossed over to the front of the diner and began wiping down the last of the tables, Lorelai trailing behind him. She gathered up the salt shakers and stepped behind the counter to refill them.

"So how long have you been witnessing this pattern?" Luke asked as he stacked the chairs on top of the tables.

"A couple of days," Lorelai replied as she returned the salt shakers to the tables. Luke walked back behind the counter and began filtering through his receipts.

"I thought I'd give her some time to figure things out by herself," Lorelai remarked. "But three weeks and –" She waved her hands in the air. "Nothing."

"I'm not sure what we can do here," Luke replied unsurely. "She's an adult. Logan's an adult. This kid, we can help, but –"

"I want Rory to have an easier experience of motherhood than I did," Lorelai stated. "I don't want her to have to be the person who doesn't know how to console her kid when she wonders where her dad is. I don't want her to be overwhelmed by the big stuff because she made it harder on herself than she had to. I spent my whole life making sure that wouldn't happen because I knew if I did what everyone else wanted me to do, that's where it would end up."

"Hey," Luke said, reaching for her hand. "You did the right thing for her. All along, you've always done the right thing for her. Everything that's happened recently is out of your control."

Lorelai felt her panic start to subside as his understanding blue gaze met hers. "I know."

Luke squeezed her hand. "Good."

Lorelai let go of his hand and sat back down on the stool. "I just can't let go of the feeling that this is all going to end up with the two of them screaming at each other in court. And we're going to have to take Rory's side over his, and it won't –"

"It won't be the right side."

Lorelai nodded. "Right."

"I don't think it will come to that," Luke attempted to assure her.

"Logan's not going to give up," Lorelai said. "He's got money, prestige, determination – and as much as I appreciate you pushing him out of the house, it could count against Rory in a big way. And I don't want Rory to have to go through what you did."

Luke remained silent, thinking back to his own custody trial almost a decade ago. He had come so close to losing April forever, after he had ended up unintentionally sacrificing the two people he had hoped would be the family he had secretly wanted for years. At that time, April had seemed like his remaining link to whatever humanity he still possessed. She had been the one thing that made him want to continue participating in the world.

It hadn't entirely been true, of course – he still had this town, and the diner, and all of the people who still cared for him and depended on him. Liz and TJ and Jess and Lane and Zach and all of their subsequent offspring had needed him to be there for him, regardless of the fact that remaining half of his heart that belonged to Lorelai had remained frozen. He didn't know if he would have the will to be there for them if he hadn't had April. That will hadn't existed for him the first time he lost Lorelai, when it had been easier to retreat within himself and lash out at everyone in a blind rage.

He didn't know what would have become of him if Anna had succeeded in keeping April away from him. Would he have been any use to Liz and Lane and Zach after that? Would he have made his way back to Lorelai? What kind of man would he have been? Would he have been anything close to being worthy of her and the life they shared?

"I could talk to him."

The words were out of his mouth before he even noticed it.

Lorelai scoffed. "I doubt he's going to agree to be alone with you at this point."

"We could do it here," Luke suggested. "In a public place. I think if I could just talk to him, man to man, that he wouldn't see it as a threat. He hasn't gone anywhere near Rory in a few weeks, has he?"

"I don't think so," Lorelai replied. "But how does _you_ talking to him help us get through to Rory?"

"I think if I can just talk to him and know for a fact that he isn't doing this just to get her back and that he really will respect her boundaries, it will help," Luke replied. He straightened up and looked Lorelai in the eye. "It won't be like it was before. Back then, I was a dad trying to protect my kids. Now I'm just someone whose kid was kept away from him talking to someone else whose kid might be kept away from him."

Lorelai's heart surged. She reached for Luke's hand again as he offered her that small smile that was reserved for just the two of them.

"I've been through the custody thing," Luke said. "I don't want it to get that far. It's nasty and destructive and I barely kept April from seeing the worst part of it. I don't want Rory or our grandkid to be put in that position."

Lorelai remembered Luke telling her a year ago that he had always thought of Rory as being "a little bit mine."

Biological facts notwithstanding, she had always been his. He had proven that time and time again that he was the only person who was worthy of the role.

"Let me clear it with Rory before you make the call," Lorelai suggested. "I don't want her to think that we're ganging up on her."

Luke nodded. "Fair enough."

Lorelai knew she was unwise to trust it, but she actually began to believe that something resembling peace might return to this part of her life soon.

Well, before that storm from Nantucket descended on them, of course.

* * *

Three days later, Luke sat in a corner table at the diner, waiting for the bells on the door to signal the beginning of the end of this stalemate.

After weeks of avoiding the topic, Rory had been unexpectedly open to Luke sitting down and talking with Logan. Lorelai had made clear to her that Luke didn't intend to use this as an opportunity to force Logan to permanently go away - after all, he had already displayed a more forceful way of ensuring that outcome. However, she seemed more receptive to the possibility that this might actually be a way to move things past her own stubbornness (or so she claimed).

Luke was sick of it. He knew Rory was better than this. He still wasn't crazy about having to interfere in the relationship conflicts of his adult children, but things couldn't go on the way they had been. He knew that by bitter experience. The longer you let things fester, the more it became a certainty that it would blow up in your face. That had happened to him time and time again, usually because he was trying so hard to make someone happy that he neglected the other people in the equation.

Rory might not be his blood daughter, but she had certainly been around him long enough to learn this from him. Ignoring your problems didn't make them go away. Maybe if he managed to help fix this, April would be able to avoid making the same mistakes.

Logan uncertainly entered the diner and slid into the seat across from Luke. He carefully removed his jacket and placed it on the back of his chair.

"Just so you know, I'm not entirely comfortable with this," Logan stated, his eyes darting around the diner as if he were waiting to be ambushed.

"That makes two of us," Luke huffed. "Do you want any coffee?"

Logan nodded. "Black," he clarified.

Luke crossed the diner and placed one of his more spartan coffee cups in front of Logan and poured him a cup. He sat back down across from Logan.

Logan took a sip from his cup and placed it back down on the table.

"So . . ."

"So."

Luke crossed his hands over each other, feeling his patience begin to fray. "Why don't you start by telling me how the hell all of this happened?"

"Well, she won't return my calls –"

"Not that," Luke spat out. Logan cringed, and Luke reeled himself back in. "Why don't you start by telling me why you were sleeping with Rory for more than a year when you were engaged to someone else?"

Logan sighed, and nervously looked around at the other customers in the diner. No one seemed to be paying them any attention.

"Nothing's going to happen to you in here," Luke told him. "I'm not going to attack you. I just want to know why."

"Look, we tried to have a real relationship. It didn't work," Logan attempted to explain.

"It did work. I saw you. You and Rory were together for three years. You lived together. You asked her to marry you. How do you get from that to her not being good enough for you?"

"It was never that she wasn't good enough," Logan claimed, his voice rising.

"Then explain it to me."

"We were great when we were in college," Logan began. "It was afterwards that it didn't work. When we got together five years ago, we tried to do it the normal way. But we couldn't keep it together. I wanted to stay in London and Rory wanted to stay everywhere else." Logan paused and swallowed another sip from his cup. "I assume you know about that."

Luke nodded. 'Vaguely." He had picked a few things up from Lorelai at the time, but he had mostly been concerned with helping Jess restart the book press after it had gone under. Rory had been more than capable of taking care of herself at that point and his attention had been diverted to the person who needed him more.

Besides, the less he knew about his daughters's romances, the better for everyone involved. That strategy had seemed to work for everyone until recently.

Luke turned his attention back to Logan. "I still think there's something I'm missing here."

Logan sighed and bent his head down slightly. "My family wanted me to settle down. Get married, have kids. _I_ wanted to settle down."

Luke felt his temper start to get the better of him. "You wanted to settle down?"

Logan grimaced and gripped his side of the table.

"Exactly what part of cheating on your fiancé with my stepdaughter is considered an acceptable part of settling down?"

"It wasn't like that," Logan insisted. "Odette and I had – we had an arrangement."

Luke looked at him skeptically. "An arrangement."

"As long as nothing got back to the other person, as long as there were no visible consequences – we got to do what we wanted. Until the wedding, that is." Logan let out a deep breath. "It wasn't just me. I know Rory was seeing somebody else, too."

"Paul." Luke gazed out the window. "I think they also had an arrangement."

"Rory didn't want a relationship," Logan continued as Luke turned his head to face him. "She didn't want to stay in London. She always knew what the situation was. She never –" Logan drummed his hand against the table, and lowered his voice. "She never asked for anything different."

"Did _you_ ask?"

"I didn't think it was a possibility," Logan maintained.

"How do you know it wasn't a possibility if you didn't ask?"

"I didn't." Logan took another sip of coffee. "If she would have been open to it, I would have wanted to work things out. But I didn't think she felt like I did."

Luke briefly wondered if the communication problems he and Lorelai had faced could have been passed down to the next generation. It wasn't the first time he had thought this.

"That's neither here nor there at this point," Luke pointed out. "But it may be part of the problem."

"If Rory doesn't want a relationship right now, I'm not going to push her into one," Logan said. "But she won't talk to me at all. I just want a relationship with my kid. I just want to do what's right here."

"What about your family?"

Logan remained silent.

Luke had expected this.

"They don't know, do they?"

"No," Logan admitted. "They don't."

"You know, I don't really understand how things work in your world, Logan," Luke began. "But I don't think you can keep this kind of thing a secret. I don't really have a lot of faith in your commitment as a father if you think it's just something you can keep to the side."

"It's not –"

"I don't like where this pattern is headed," Luke continued, beginning to half suspect that Rory had been right about pushing Logan away. "Rory as the girl that you keep on the side. This kid being something that you keep on the side. How long is it before you go back to your real life, your _real_ family –"

"I gave it up!" Logan exclaimed.

Reverend Skinner cranked his head from where he was sitting at the next table.

"It's fine," Luke assured him. The reverend turned his attention back to his meal.

Logan lowered his voice. "I didn't mean to –"

"It's okay," Luke assured him.

"What do they know around here?"

"Nobody knows anything," Luke insisted. "Rory isn't even showing yet."

That was probably a lie, but Luke made it a point not to concern himself with these things if he didn't have to.

Logan sighed and took another sip of coffee. 'If you say so."

"Look, Rory feels guilty about you leaving everything behind," Luke explained. "Maybe she's also wondering if you'll just chuck all of it and go back if it doesn't work out for you. I know I'm starting to think that."

"That's not –" Logan gripped his side of the table again. "My father isn't speaking to me. He's upset that I left the company. I didn't get a chance to explain the entire situation to him. I'm not sure what I have to explain if Rory still won't budge."

"Are you serious about leaving your father's company?" Luke asked. "Leaving London?"

"I am," Logan insisted. "I've got a job with a good company. I'm not going out on a limb like I did when I was younger. I've got an apartment in New York. I don't want to go back to London. I want my life to be here so I can be here for my kid. This isn't some sort of whim that I'm going to give up on later."

"And your fiancé?"

"She knows what happened," Logan said. "She understands this. I mean, this baby is definitely a visible consequence of being with someone else. It's over between us."

"Is that something you're going to hold against Rory?" Luke asked.

"No, " Logan insisted. "As long as Odette and I were committed to the same kind of life, it was something that could have worked out for us. But the arrangement we had – it was there for a reason." Logan looked to Luke with emphasis. "I don't want to go back to her."

The silence reverberated through the rest of the diner as Logan finished his coffee. Luke wasn't exactly sure how to respond to any of it. He was more at a loss at how to understand how Logan's side of the world worked than he had been before, and he felt that he had learned more about Rory's entangled personal circumstances to last a lifetime.

Of course, it wasn't exactly like he had room to talk when it came to conventional relationships, either.

"Is Rory some sort of escape hatch for you?" Luke asked after a moment.

"Escape hatch –"

"Are you doing this because you see this as your big chance to get away? I mean, are Rory and the baby some sort of replacement family for what you were going to have with your fiancé?"

"Does it matter?" Logan asked, his voice taking on an impatient tone.

"It does to Rory. She still thinks you're trying to pressure her into something she doesn't want."

"I know that," Logan replied. "That's not what it's about for me. I have every intention of respecting her boundaries. But I need her to meet me halfway."

Luke rose from his seat and went back behind the counter to retrieve the coffeepot. "I get that," he told Logan as he refilled his cup.

The fear seemed to momentarily drain from Logan's face.

"You met my daughter at the house," Luke continued. "April."

Logan nodded. "I know the story," he said. "I read that book Rory's friend wrote."

Luke scoffed. "My nephew doesn't always have the best discretion."

"That's your nephew – " Logan nodded, the realization dawning on his face. "I didn't put it together until now, but yeah. I see the resemblance."

"He lived with me when he and Rory were dating in high school," Luke explained. "He knows way too much about this family. I'm not supposed to let on that I know I'm in the book."

"You don't really look like a tattooed vegan chef," Logan remarked. "Rory's mother – not exactly a dead ringer for a blue haired blues singer, either."

"Look, my point is that I've been in your position," Luke replied, eager to change the subject. "I didn't meet my daughter until she was twelve years old. I didn't handle it well, and it caused a lot of problems for Lorelai and me. I want to help stop that from happening here. I don't want to put everyone through that again."

"I appreciate that," Logan said, taking a sip of coffee from his cup. "I'm kind of at an impasse of what to do next. I've tried everything."

"Well, what you can try _next_ is to restrain yourself from acting out the next time you have a problem with the mother of your child," Luke said pointedly. "I'm going to do what I can to help you out here, but the next time you come like that at Rory or April, I will throw you out again. And that will be the last time you come near them. Do you understand me?"

Logan nodded. "Yeah."

"I'll talk to Rory," Luke said. "I think we all understand this has gone on long enough."

"If you think it will help –"

"I'm pretty sure it will," Luke said with conviction. "I think she's ready to come around."

* * *

Two days later, Luke and Lorelai sat crowded around the diner counter as the quietly observed the parents of their grandchild at the corner of the diner.

They could hear Rory chuckling and reaching out to retrieve her appointment book from her purse. Logan was grinning and jotting down notes in his phone.

"I think we may have helped to arrange a reconciliation of sorts," Lorelai remarked to Luke.

Luke grinned and leaned across the counter to kiss her.

"Sometimes we make a pretty good team," he whispered in her ear.


	8. Chapter 8

_Okay, guys, apologies: I have not updated this story in 10,000 years. Unfortunately, I didn't get as far in the plot with this chapter as I originally planned, but all will be revealed in the next couple of updates. I'm going to be taking a different approach with Emily learning of Rory's pregnancy than a lot of other post-AYITL stories have, but it's going to take a bit to get there._

 _I've incorporated the canon from **The Morning After** into this story. That means (as is explained below) Rory and Jess have known each other in the biblical sense at least once. We'll get into that a little more in the upcoming chapters._

 _So, read, enjoy (or don't), and feel free to leave a review._

On their first married Valentines Day, Luke and Lorelai were gifted with something they hadn't had the chance to enjoy in a long time.

An empty house.

April was spending the week in Cambridge finishing up her own schoolwork, having learned in embarrassment a few years back that it wasn't wise to hang around the house when this holiday came around. Rory had driven down to Philadelphia and was spending a few days learning about the inner workings of Jess's company. She was planning on staying in the spare room of Jess's apartment and returning shortly before accompanying Luke and Lorelai to Nantucket to officially break the news to Emily of her pregnancy. Resuming contact with Logan had finally seemed to force Rory to stop avoiding the other tasks she had been putting off, and both Luke and Lorelai were glad for it. She would have her mid-pregnancy sonogram the next week – the first big baby-related event she and Logan planned to participate in together – and hopefully the second half of her pregnancy would unfold with significantly less drama than the first half had.

Still, Lorelai wondered to herself if there was something more to Rory's visit than Jess's official explanation that Rory viewed her book project a bit too idealistically and needed to learn more about what his company could actually do for her. Jess and Rory had been spending a lot of time together lately, and Lorelai couldn't help but remind herself that their relationship wasn't entirely platonic, and never had been. During the first couple of years after she and Luke had reconciled, they had seemed to reconnect and grow closer, but mostly in the sense of being friends and almost-stepcousins. The rest of the family figured that what was in the past remained in the past – until Rory and Jess had ended up sleeping together four summers ago. Rory hadn't wanted to pursue a relationship and had gotten involved with Logan again almost immediately afterwards, but Lorelai couldn't help but think that this overnight visit had the possibility of leading them into crossing that line once more.

However, she quickly put that into the back of her mind. Valentines Day was precious to her and Luke for a reason, and she didn't want to squander this time with him. They had the rest of the year to worry about their kids, but this night had long been reserved for them and only them.

Their first two Valentines Days as a couple had been wretched occasions they tried not to remember. The first one took place a few weeks after their first break-up, with both of them miserable and wondering how a few seemingly simple misunderstandings had gotten so completely out of control. The second one had taken place during their disastrous "couples' weekend" with Rory and Logan in Martha's Vineyard. Luke's disintegrating hold on balancing his responsibilities had finally started to get the better of him, and their relationship had been the primary victim. Years later, he would cringe at remembering at how cruelly and casually he had betrayed his promises to her in that cottage bedroom.

The next time the holiday rolled around, they were barely on speaking terms. Oddly enough, the experience wasn't that bad for either of them by that point. Lorelai had volunteered for the night shift at the Dragonfly, wanting to distract herself from the knowledge that her marriage to Christopher had ended the week before. She had made it almost to midnight before it came to her that what she was avoiding wasn't actually heartbreak but acknowledgement that her grand marriage experiment had failed. It should have stung more to know that she had sacrificed so much – her pride, her independence, much of the respect she had for herself, as well as the relationship with the man that she still loved – but it didn't. She just felt relieved that she didn't have to pretend to be someone she wasn't anymore.

For the first time in a long time, she didn't feel like the world was about to crash down on her. She felt like herself again, and it was freeing. She didn't know if her future would include Luke, but part of her still very much hoped that it would.

Luke had spent the holiday with April, content to be allowed to spend time with his daughter before she moved across the country. He was still endlessly grateful to Lorelai for having given him that chance, and tried not to think about the fact that he had lost her for good. He'd read her reference letter more times than he cared to remember, and he still retained a small glimmer of hope that Lorelai felt for him what he still did for her. She had come through for him when he needed her the most, and despite everything that had happened, he only wanted to do the same thing for her someday.

The next week, he found out along with the rest of Stars Hollow that her marriage was over. He tried not to let himself think of it, but his small, slight hopes were the same ones that Lorelai silently held. Maybe with all of the hurt and disappointment and lofty expectations behind them, there was a way for them to begin again.

Maybe.

The next decade of Valentines Days was their way of starting over, not in the tradition of grand gestures and romantic clichés, but keeping true to what had allowed them to build their life together in the wake of all the damage that they had created in the past. Their relationship had been rebuilt by paying attention to the details, bit by bit, until the domestic, everyday minutiae of their days together came to be the main thing that had made their lifelong bond possible.

It wasn't glamorous, but it was joyful and true and real. There were times in their lives for romance and glitz, and that was usually reserved for their biannual trips to New York, often planned around the time of their original anniversary or Lorelai's birthday. Valentines Day was about them: a candlelit dinner at home, lovingly prepared by Luke, a carefully selected piece of jewelry to present to her, and a quiet celebration in their own bed.

As the hours dwindled on their first Valentines Day and Lorelai lay curled up in the middle of Luke's chest, she came to think about how grateful she was that this tradition had stayed the same, despite everything else that had changed over the past few months. A couple of months ago, she and Luke had been empty nesters at something of a loss as to whether their somewhat unconventional relationship was all that it needed to be. Now they were married, with two adult kids constantly in and out of the house and a pregnant adult daughter who had staked a semi-permanent presence there. It was almost as if they were living out that conventional life they had forsaken so many years ago, and had discovered that the bond between them had always been more than enough to maintain it.

She had been scared of that life breaking them for a long time, but the relationship they had built had been enough. It had always been enough.

"Was I supposed to do something different this time?" Luke asked, momentarily jerking her out of the pleasant daze she had succumbed to. "I mean, we are married this time."

Lorelai shifted her head to look him in the eye, his drowsy, satiated gaze reflected in her own. "No. I don't want this day to change between us."

"So you're happy?"

Lorelai reached for his hand and clutched her fingers between hers, gratified to feel their rings clacking together in a dance they'd only begun to perfect. "I'm always happy on this day, Luke."

"Good."

"I do expect fireworks on our next anniversary, though," she told him. "In fact, I think you should start planning now. To account for me letting you slack on this occasion, of course. I expect it. I demand it."

Luke's grin spread to both corners of his face. "Ten years," he said softly. He bent down to give her a lingering kiss.

"It'll be pretty busy by that point," Lorelai said softly when they parted for breath, her mind briefly reminding her of that other part of her life that would include a business annex in the midst in renovations and a daughter nearing the end of her third trimester in a little over three months.

"We'll take a few days off just for us," Luke reassured her, resting his forehead against hers. "I think you'll be surprised with what I can come up with," he whispered, his sultry drawl effecting the usual tingling result.

Lorelai rested her head back down on his chest, happily remembering some of the anniversary celebrations she'd enjoyed over the past couple of years.

It might take some work to coax the surprise out of Luke by the time the next anniversary rolled around, but she was sure she'd get it out of him sooner or later.

* * *

By the time the weekend rolled around, the house was anything but quiet.

"It's an ideal society – "

"It's _not_ an ideal society – "

"– anti-gulag literature "

"You'd think an anarchist planet wouldn't have so many dang rules – "

Lorelai groaned and put her pillow over her head, trying to drown out Jess and April's discussion from downstairs. She could still hear them arguing a few minutes later, accompanied by the sounds of bacon sizzling and plates clanging together.

Luke strolled in from the bathroom just then and crossed over to the closet to retrieve his clothes.

"Have they been doing that all morning?" Lorelai asked in an exasperated voice from the bed.

"I think so," Luke answered as he pulled on a sweater over his T-shirt. "Jess said he was going to start breakfast, at least."

"They're like eternal college students who get up really, really early," Lorelai complained, still not moving from the bed. "Rory up?"

"She showered before I did," Luke replied as he pulled on a clean pair of jeans and reached in his dresser to pull out some dress socks. "I fixed her a huge cup of tea first thing this morning. She says she's hitting that second trimester energy drag."

Lorelai frowned. "Energy drag?" Rory had actually been much more motivated over the past few weeks than Lorelai had seen her since she first announced her pregnancy. It had been over thirty years, but Lorelai could vaguely recall her energy level actually returning to normal during the middle part of her pregnancy. Not coincidentally, that was the time during which both she and Rory had been forced to come to terms with certain aspects of their future motherhood that they had avoided making decisions on.

Luke shrugged as he slipped on his shoes. "I don't really understand these things," he said sheepishly. "As long as you're both ready to go by nine, I think we should be good, though." He gestured towards the end table. "I brought up some coffee for you."

Lorelai reached out for the cup and took a quick sip, waiting for the hit of liquid caffeine to soothe her nerves as it usually did.

She was going to need it today.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Lorelai was showered, dressed, made up for the day, and enjoying her second cup of coffee at the kitchen table, both her and Luke's bags stacked on top of each other in the hallway next to the front door.

There was still no sign of Rory. Or her luggage.

Jess and April sat at the table across from her, April staring at her phone while Jess was engrossed in a copy of _Roadside Picnic_. Dual copies of abandoned paperbacks lay next to each other on the chair where Rory usually sat, their antiquated orange and black design matching the colors of the vintage T shirts that both kids were sporting. Lorelai knew without checking that April had stolen hers from Jess's collection years ago.

Luke finished his bowl of oatmeal and carried both his plate and Lorelai's to the kitchen sink, Lorelai having consumed her pancakes and bacon a full ten minutes ago. Lorelai flashed him a grateful smile and looked over at Rory's half-closed door, fighting the impulse to intrude on her daughter's privacy before she absolutely had to.

"It reads better if you have an actual book in front of you," Jess remarked to April, not looking up from his book.

"I'm a busy woman. I can't carry around an entire bookcase with me like _some_ people," April retorted, briefly glancing over at the green duffel bag that rested near Jess's feet.

Jess snorted and continued reading.

"Did you stay at your mom's last night?" Luke asked Jess as he placed the dishes in the dishwasher.

"Nah, they went to go stay with their friends in Rhode Island for the weekend," Jess replied. "You know, the other couple who got kicked out of the vegetable cult for being too weird."

April looked momentarily up from her phone. "The other couple – "

"Are you sure this was _really_ a cult?" Lorelai asked as she finished her coffee.

"Sometimes it's best not to ask too many questions," Jess replied. "Anyway, I don't like staying there when they don't know I'm going to be there. Rory and I were up going over book edits pretty late. I spent the night at the apartment."

Lorelai's interest was piqued at that revelation. Her eyes met Luke's briefly, and he grunted slightly.

"We're starting work on the apartment next week," Luke reminded Jess. "You may be stuck on the couch here for the next few weeks if you're going to be dropping in."

"I know," Jess said. "I just came here to give this one a little remedial literary education – "

April grunted in a manner that was identical to her father's.

"– and say goodbye to Rory before you guys left," Jess continued.

Lorelai pulled her chair out and crossed over to Rory's door. "I'm going to see how close she is to getting ready," she informed the rest of the family.

Rory sat on the bed half-dressed, having yet to apply her makeup or put on her shoes. Her bags were packed neatly beside her dresser, and she was pulling her hair back in a loose ponytail.

"We've got to leave in half an hour," Lorelai reminded Rory as she sat next to her beside the bed. "Did you start throwing up again?"

Rory shook her head. "I'm past that point," she told Lorelai.

"I know, but it still happened a couple of times after you passed the three-month mark," Lorelai reminded her. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I guess I'm just tired," Rory told her mother. "I know I said I wanted to do this before the sonogram next week, but I got up this morning and – "She looked up at her mother, the expression in her eyes sad and drawn. "I just keep thinking it's a bad idea. I have to keep talking myself into actually getting ready."

Lorelai smiled slightly. "You know, Rory, we can tell your grandmother you weren't feeling well and have the trip just be me and Luke, like it was at Christmas. But I think we both know that's going to make it even more complicated when she does find out."

"I was actually sick then," Rory admitted. "I couldn't get on that ferry when I still kept having morning sickness on and off. It's not the same thing now."

"No, it's not," Lorelai agreed. "I know you've had a lot of difficulty in having the hard conversations with the people involved in this situation, Rory, but you can't keep putting it off. It's gone on too long. She needs to know."

"She's the last person I needed to talk to about this that doesn't know yet," Rory said in a small voice. She stared down at her hands. "She's going to be so disappointed."

Lorelai sighed, memories of angry confrontations and accusations that she had ruined your future forever rising to the surface inside her head. She quickly forced them back down. "I can't say springing this particular piece of news on Emily Gilmore doesn't have precedent for going to a bad place," she told her daughter. "I don't know how she's going to react. But it isn't quite as bad as you might think. You've got an apartment to stay in, you've got an entire extended family ready to support you, and Logan is going to stay involved. You've got the book to work on before the baby gets here. You've got so much more going for you than I ever did."

Rory looked back up at her mother. "I'm still afraid of how she's going to react to hearing about the book," she admitted.

Lorelai sighed. "I can't predict how that part's going to go," she said. "But Luke and I will be right beside you no matter how she takes it. It's going to be okay."

"I guess I better finish getting ready, then," Rory replied. "Did you guys save some breakfast for me?"

"There's a pancake, a sliver of scrambled egg, and two slices of bacon still waiting for you," Lorelai told her. "But you've got to be fast. I spied April eyeing them the moment I left the kitchen."

"I will, Mom," Rory said, scooting off the edge of the bed and heading towards the bathroom. "Thanks."

* * *

"Tell Emily I said hello," April said as she hugged Rory at the door.

"You're sure you don't want to go?" Rory asked her as she straightened her jacket.

"I'm sure it would be interesting," April began as Luke shot her a warning look.

"That's one way of putting it," Rory replied.

"No, this your thing, between the three of you," April continued. "I'll see her another time."

"I expect this house to be in the same piece as we left it," Luke told April. "You're staying until Monday?"

April nodded. "I'll be wanting to hear everything when you guys get back," she said, turning back to Rory. "And I do mean everything."

"Enough," Luke admonished his daughter.

"You'll do great," Jess said, leaning in to hug Rory goodbye. "I'll e-mail you back those edits, OK?"

Lorelai and Luke both noticed that their hug lingered a bit more than was necessary, and she nudged his shoulder. Luke let out a less than subtle cough as they separated.

"Ready to go?" Lorelai asked Rory as she and Luke picked up their luggage and prepared to exit the house.

"As I'll ever be," Rory replied, flashing her mother a nervous and completely unconvincing smile.

Luke and Lorelai exited the house with their daughter, both of them hoping that all three of them escaped from this weekend with considerably less damage than their offspring anticipated.


	9. Chapter 9

_So this chapter is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, and it also doesn't cover as much ground as the amount of words here imply. There's a bit of a callback to **The Morning After** and to the sequel to it that I might write someday (short version: Jess wrote a book about Luke and Lorelai back in 2013 or so that affected a lot of the AYITL era family dynamics), and there's quite a bit of potential Literati talk, so be warned._

 _That said, I apologize for the infrequent updates on this story, especially because the next chapter is where the really meaty stuff takes place. But for now, read, enjoy (or don't), and feel free to leave me a review._

"Are you still feeling okay?" Lorelai asked her daughter as she looked out at the water cresting below them.

Rory shrugged and turned back from the balcony of the ferry. "I'm fine," she assured her mother, sipping from the thermos of tea that she had prepared before she left the house.

"If you say so," Lorelai replied, thoroughly unconvinced. She consumed the last dregs of coffee from her own thermos, and pondered to herself that they were still over an hour away from their destination.

"I'm just – "Rory began. "I shouldn't have waited this long. I know Grandma's going to be upset that she's just now finding out about everything. It was just – it was just too much."

"It's not just my mother," Lorelai gently pointed out. "You dragged your feet on Logan, too."

"I know I did," Rory conceded, distractedly fiddling with her bracelet. "You and Luke were right all along. I should have let him help as soon as he was ready to. Which was right away, as it turned out. It just wasn't part of the plan."

"Was telling your grandmother part of the plan?" Lorelai asked.

"Eventually, yes," Rory affirmed. "And not just about the baby. I was going to tell her about the book, too. She and Grandpa are such a big part of it. I can only handle so much at a time."

Lorelai once again wondered how closely her mother's reaction to discovering that Rory was planning on mining their family's darkest secrets for writing material would mirror her own. Not so long ago, that had remained one of her biggest fears, but she had learned to let go of her reservations about Rory's book as her attention was drawn to more pressing matters. The drama surrounding Rory's pregnancy had dwarfed the other major element in her daughter's life, and she had imagined that her mother's potential fury and shame would find its own target not on the book, but on her once-ambitious granddaughter's unplanned child.

Lorelai knew that she would bear the brunt of the blame for the situation, and she was prepared for it. Her first instinct had always been to protect Rory from any harm. She just didn't know which bombshell was going to provoke Emily's ire first.

Lorelai recognized so much of herself in her daughter as she faced the same situation that she had been in, defiant and stubborn and often overwhelmed. Yet she also saw so much of herself in the person her mother had been as Rory faced what would have once been Lorelai's greatest disappointment. Lorelai had sought to do the opposite of what her parents had done, to provide Rory with the love and support and gentle encouragement that she hadn't received as a teenager. She had been confident that Rory's additional years of life experience would make her better prepared for this experience than Lorelai had been, and that she wouldn't need to interfere with whatever plan Rory would eventually set for herself.

The experience with Logan – and the unexpected role that she and Luke had been forced to play in order to broker a peace between him and Rory – had brought Lorelai to the realization that she may have been wrong. Rory had spent so long in a nomadic shell, bouncing around from continent to continent as she avoided any semblance of adult responsibility, that she hadn't learned to deal with unexpected challenges the way that someone her age should have. She had gone so long without a plan that when it came time to revert to the detail-oriented, organized person she had been as a young girl that she also dealt with any deviations to that plan the way she had when she was a young girl.

Years ago, she had stolen a boat, quit school, and run away to live in her grandparents' pool house. Now it seemed that she chose to deal with her frustrations by pushing away the father of her child and avoiding her grandmother for months.

Lorelai knew more than anyone the importance of breaking out of that pattern as soon as possible.

"I know I've told you this before," she began softly. "But the situation you're going to be in is going to throw a lot of difficult stuff at you at once. You can't run away and hide. It won't be an option anymore."

"I know," Rory said, clearly annoyed. "I've been reading all the books, trying to figure out as much as I can when I can. There's so much information in my head about breastfeeding and sleep training and vaccination schedules that I feel I can't fit anymore."

Lorelai smiled. "There's a lot of things about motherhood that you'll never be able to find in a book," she said.

"I know that, too," Rory said. "I've been talking to Paris and Lane as much as I can about this, to find out what it's really like."

"And what did they tell you?" Lorelai asked.

Rory looked out at the horizon, her eyes briefly clouding over. "Lane says that sometimes it was easier when the boys were babies," she said. "It got a little harder when they got old enough to start asking her questions."

"That's the kind of thing I mean," Lorelai said softly. "I kind of think women like us have an advantage in dealing with all these challenges before we have a baby. We learn by doing it that we can handle what comes next."

Rory turned back to look at her mother. "I'm not sure I agree with that," she said softly.

"Agree with it or not, it's the situation that you're in," Lorelai said. "You can't keep stalling, Rory. You're not a kid anymore. You've got to learn to deal with these things."

Rory sighed. "Part of me wishes you'd just tell me that it's going to get easier from this point on," she said wearily.

"We both know that isn't the case," Lorelai said. "I love you too much to lie about that part."

"I just have trouble figuring how to deal with fitting all these different people in with what's "going to happen next," Rory said. "It was Logan, and now Grandma, and Jess – "

Lorelai's attention seized on that last part. "Jess? What about Jess?"

Rory rolled her eyes. "Let's just forget it."

"No, let's not forget it," Lorelai said, her temper flaring. "Did something happen with Jess when you went to stay with him? Did you visit him because something was _already_ happening?"

"See, this is what I mean," Rory said. "You made it clear all those years ago that you didn't approve of Jess and I getting together. So why even bring it up? We can't discuss it rationally."

"Rory, I – "Lorelai began. She calmed her nerves and started again. "I don't feel the same way about Jess that I did all those years ago," she clarified.

"Because he was screwed up then," Rory replied bitterly. "He was screwed up and I was doing well. Now I'm the one who doesn't know what the hell she's doing and he's got everything all figured out. It's the same thing all over again, isn't it?"

"I never said that," Lorelai said softly. "Rory, I do think you know what you're doing. Maybe you didn't six months ago, but you do now. I just don't think starting a relationship with someone who is so closely connected to you is a good idea right now."

'Well, you don't have to worry," Rory said. She met her mother's gaze evenly, and Lorelai saw the same blend of defiance and sadness in them that she knew had met her own mother's stare many decades ago. "Nothing happened between us. Nothing's going to happen. Jess and I – "Rory sighed wearily. "It's definitely not an option right now."

"Is that something that you want to happen?" Lorelai asked tentatively.

Rory took another sip of tea from her thermos and let her attention drift to the horizon. "I don't know, Mom. I don't know."

The silence coalesced around them as they both listened to the waves crest against the boat.

"It's not that there aren't times when I thought it could happen," Rory said after a moment. "Sometimes we'll be alone, and it will be late at night, and I'll look at him like I used to look at him, and I'm reminded of how much we have in common. And I'll catch myself thinking that if I only could consume alcohol right now, or if I weren't pregnant, that it would be all the extra push we needed to make things happen like they did last night. And we'd be ready for it. It would be easy."

Rory looked back up at her mother, looking sad and lost again, and Lorelai's heart nearly broke in two.

"Then I remember that I am pregnant," Rory continued, her voice shaking slightly. "And I feel guilty. Because even with everything else going on, I do want this baby. She should be the most important thing on my mind right now. And when I'm with Jess, I'm not thinking about her. We don't talk about the baby. Sometimes I think the only time when I'm not thinking about the baby is when I'm with him."

Lorelai's attention zeroed in on that revelation. Even though some of her reservations about Jess remained intact after so many years, this was the last thing she expected to hear about him.

What had he said to Rory? Or _about_ Rory? This didn't seem like him.

"It's not that he isn't supportive," Rory continued hurriedly, and Lorelai felt herself relax slightly. "He's always been supportive, ever since he found out I was pregnant. But when we're together, I kind of feel like I'm the person I used to be, where I can talk about books and culture and intellectual things. It's not that I couldn't talk about those things with Logan, but our relationship is in such a strange place right now and it is mostly about the baby. So, I just feel this split when it comes to Jess and the rest of my life, and I don't really need that kind of a split right now." Rory paused to take a deep breath. "Especially since I'm not really dealing well with a lot of other stuff."

"Did you talk about any of this with Jess?" Lorelai asked.

"No," Rory said as she let out an incredulous guffaw. "Wouldn't that be crazy, if I initiated something and he didn't feel the same way? Oh, man." She took another sip of tea and met Lorelai's gaze, a shaky confidence returning to her expression. "He's still seeing a couple of girls in Philadelphia," Rory clarified. "I don't think he's serious about any of them, but I don't know if he'd even consider us getting together as an option." She put her thermos down and rested her hand on her stomach. "I can't really blame him on that one."

Lorelai remembered the many longing glances she had seen on Jess's face over the past few months, both before and after Rory's pregnancy become common knowledge. She knew that look too well: it was the same one that Luke had directed her way in the years of their early courtship, always when he thought that she wasn't looking. If nothing else, Lorelai knew that part of her nephew's heart still belonged to Rory and had for years, just as Luke's had belonged to her. Lorelai knew that if Rory had earnestly asked for a relationship with Jess, that he would be enthusiastic towards whatever she had to offer.

None of that meant that any of it was a sensible idea, of course.

"Rory, you've got the rest of your life to figure out how being a mom is going to fit into your romantic life," Lorelai assured her daughter. "It's always going to be a little bit of a struggle, and you'll have to figure out exactly where you want to set boundaries. But take it from someone who learned the hard way – keeping everything separate permanently doesn't always lead to a good place."

"I think you did things almost exactly right, Mom," Rory told her. "Well, except for that last go-round with Dad. I think we both know I feel about that one."

"Rory, if you've learned anything at all from my example, it's that you take everything I did that year and turn around and do the exact opposite," Lorelai said pointedly.

"No argument there," Rory said, and Lorelai felt a long-suppressed sense of guilt start to surface within her as she was reminded of everything that had gone wrong so long ago.

She shut it back then. She and Luke had dealt with it, and they'd survived. Reviving those ghosts would not do any of them a bit of good at this point.

"I think you've got a little bit of time to figure out how you want to balance these parts of your life," Lorelai said. "I think you're wise not to want to start a new relationship right now. If you still want to pursue things with Jess in six months or a year – "Lorelai let out a deep breath. "I think you need to give yourself at least that much time."

"Wow," Rory responded. "That is _not_ what you said last time," she reminded her mother. "And there wasn't anything nearly as complicated as a baby back then."

"I didn't trust Jess at that time," Lorelai admitted. "He shut himself away in Luke's old apartment and didn't seem to be moving forward. He didn't seem to want to move forward. I didn't want you to get caught up in all of that. He changed, though. He put the business back together, he put out that book, and he got his life back on track. I'm not going to say that I don't have reservations, but I will keep a more open mind this time. I promise."

"I appreciate that," Rory told her mom sincerely. "For the record, Mom, I do see why you had such a problem with it back then. Especially since Jess and I are officially, well – "

She let loose a grin, and Lorelai was relieved to see some sort of levity appear on her daughter's face.

" _Connected_ ," Lorelai finished.

"We're cousins," Rory stated baldly. "It's a strange situation. Sometimes we'll spend an afternoon together and I'll start to get those feelings again, and then I'll come home and he'll be at the dinner table with April and it's like he's just another family member. And I'll remember how complicated everything is and start thinking I was crazy to even imagine something could happen."

"Well, everything in life that's worth having is at least a little complicated," Lorelai told her daughter. "When the time comes, you'll find a way to work it out. Trust me."

"I think it will be a long moment before we get to that point," Rory replied as she continued to rub her stomach. "But thanks, Mom." She sighed. "I only have room for one man in my life right now. And he's the father of this kid, and I don't want to get involved with him in that way again. I think that's enough."

"Maybe more than one," Lorelai suggested, her eyes drifting to Rory's bump.

Rory looked up at her. "You don't mean – "

"I think you know what I mean," Lorelai said gently.

"It's a girl," Rory said stubbornly. "I know it's a girl. The test next week is just confirmation of that."

"Rory, how many times have you been completely surprised during this process?" Lorelai asked.

"You said that you knew," Rory pointed out to her mother. "You said you always knew I was a girl."

"I was backed up by the sonogram," Lorelai replied.

"I can tell," Rory started to argue. "Mom, it's just – "

Her face went entirely pale.

"Rory?" Lorelai asked, panic rooting her to the spot. Maybe this trip hadn't been such a great idea. Couldn't they have called Emily and asked her to come to Hartford? How much traveling were you supposed to do when you were five months pregnant, anyway?

Rory's face lit up in a dazzling smile. "She kicked, Mom. She kicked. I can feel her," she said in a stunned voice. She picked up Lorelai's hand and placed it on her stomach.

Lorelai gently removed her hand from Rory's stomach. "It's going to be a while before I'll be able to feel anything," she told her daughter.

Rory continued to star at her stomach in adulation. "I've felt her kind of rumbling around in there for the past week or two, but I convinced myself I was imagining it. It's supposed to take longer for first pregnancies, but I really felt it that time." She looked back up her mother, joy dancing in her eyes. 'I have to call Logan. I have to tell him about it. Do you think I can get a signal on this ferry?"

Luke showed up at Lorelai's side just then, passing her a Styrofoam cup full of coffee. "I got a signal around there about half an hour ago," he remarked, gesturing towards the back end of the boat.

Rory hauled herself off of the bench she was sprawled on and dug her cell phone out of her purse. 'I'm going to go try," she said before turning back in the direction of her mother and stepfather. "I'm really doing this with Logan, aren't I?"

Lorelai smiled back at her daughter as she thought over what Rory had shared with her today. "You are. Crazy turn of events, right?"

"It is," Rory agreed as she made her way towards the back of the boat.

"Thanks," Lorelai said to Luke as she sipped the cup of coffee he had offered her. Not quite as good as his home blend, of course, but it would have to do for now. "I really needed this after that conversation."

"Is she okay?" Luke asked, momentarily concerned. "I mean . . . she doesn't look sick or unhappy."

"She's not," Lorelai replied. "She felt the baby kick for the first time."

"Oh, wow, that's a special moment," Luke remarked. "But shouldn't she have – "he shook his head. "I forget when it's supposed to happen."

"It's usually around this time," Lorelai told her husband. "I think the first time I really felt Rory was when I was a little further along. It's the first time it felt real to me, this whole having a baby thing. I told Christopher I wouldn't marry him the next week."

Luke shuffled next to her, taking Lorelai's hand in his own. Certain topics may have been retired between the two of them, but that didn't mean that there weren't spaces where he felt he often fell short of being able to comfort Lorelai like he felt that he should.

Christopher was one of those topics. The experience of looking forward to having a baby was one of the other ones. It had been taken away from him for the first time for reasons he still didn't try to understand, and both he and Lorelai had prevented it the second time due to their combined indecision and insecurities.

Luke didn't mourn or long for what he had missed. It wasn't half as important as what he did have or caring for the long list of people who needed him. However, sometimes when he saw Lorelai and Rory share these kinds of moments as they had over the past few months, he knew that there would always be times where he was a loss to understand their confusion or grief or joy, and that there wasn't anything he could do to rectify that.

"The second trimester energy drag isn't exactly a thing that exists," Lorelai said, jolting him from his thoughts. "Rory was stalling this morning."

"It's been a long time since I was around Liz or Lane when they went through this," Luke said sheepishly. "I – I don't really understand how these things work."

Lorelai shot him a knowing look.

"I figured she was stalling," Luke continued. "Emily's probably going to figure it out the minute she takes off her coat."

Lorelai laughed bitterly. "If I know Rory, she already packed some of those bulky winter maternity dresses in her carry-on bag. Mom won't take it on her. She'll take it on me for not pushing her to come clean sooner."

"We already pushed enough when it came to Logan," Luke protested.

"And it turns out that she needed that," Lorelai reminded him. "I can't be that angry. I never really had to have this kind of sit-down discussion with my parents."

Luke looked at her questionably.

"Christopher's mother found some pamphlets I got from the clinic," Lorelai explained. "It took her two minutes to get the truth out of him. They were the ones that told my parents." She took another sip of coffee from her cup. "I was four and a half months along. Almost where Rory is now."

Luke squeezed her hand harder, and Lorelai turned to look at him appreciatively. Sometimes he knew that all she needed was the knowledge that he would be there.

"Rory won't be alone like you were," he assured her. "It was her decision to come down here and tell her. We'll be there to back her up if your mother doesn't take it well."

"I know," Lorelai said and he smiled, trying to reassure her in some small way. "My kid – she's good at the practical things, but sometimes when it comes to confrontation, she doesn't do so well." She sighed. "We talked about Jess."

"What did she say?" Luke asked softly.

"She said nothing's happened between them," Lorelai told him. "She says she still has feelings for him, but that it's a bad idea right now and she isn't going to pursue anything. She says she doesn't know how he feels about it."

"He still loves her," Luke said with conviction.

Lorelai turned to look him in the eye. "You support this," she accused him.

Luke ran his thumb over her fingers and lightly traced the edge of Lorelai's wedding ring as he felt it rub up against his own.

He knew he's wasn't even close to being capable of judging his kids for their romantic choices. That opportunity had passed a long, long time ago.

"I want both Jess and Rory to be happy," he said. "I know it's a pretty complicated situation, and the fact that Logan's in the middle of it doesn't make it easier. I don't think either of us are in a position to judge what gets them there, though."

"I don't disagree, Luke," Lorelai said. "But Rory's already practically cracking over juggling everything else right now. This is not the right time to start a new relationship. For either of them."

"I know," Luke conceded. He looked Lorelai in the eye. "Logan still loves her too, you know."

Lorelai sighed. " I'm guessing he didn't exactly tell you that," she said.

"Logan looks at Rory the same exact way that Jess does," Luke explained. "They've had a relationship more recently. They're having a kid together. I have no idea how this is going to work out. And as much as I love you and our life together, we haven't exactly set up the best relationship blueprint for any of these kids. The best thing to do is just to stand back and try to support them no matter what happens."

"Even Logan?"

"Logan's the father of our grandchild," Luke said. "I might hate some of the things that he did, and there's a lot I don't understand about him. But he's the father of that baby, and he wants to be involved. I'm going to try to protect his position because I had the same one once. As for the rest of it – "

"One thing at a time, right?" Lorelai said softly.

"One thing at a time," Luke reiterated.

Lorelai lay her head against his shoulder as they watched the sunlight reflect off of the sea that surrounded them.

* * *

True to form, Rory met their grandmother at the docks tightly shrouded in her winter coat, careful not to reveal any recent changes in their appearance.

Emily was delighted to see them, and was warm and gracious towards Lorelai and Luke for dropping in with Rory for this unexpected visit. Emily's retirement from society life had softened her considerably: she had taken up working life and life on the island with equal vigor, and the result seemed to be an entirely different woman. Luke and Lorelai had begun their Christmas trip in Nantucket gap-jawed at Emily's new enthusiasm for tormenting tourists with her accounts of maritime slaughter and had ended it with Luke showing Emily his favorite fishing strategies. Never in her wildest dreams had Lorelai imagined that she would see Luke and her mother fishing together in contentment, but somehow it had seemed a natural evolution of the woman that her mother had become. Under normal circumstances, it would have been something she would have been impatient to show to her daughter, but it hadn't seemed the time or the place. Rory had stiffly returned her calls from home with little enthusiasm for coming to visit her grandmother, and had mostly avoided the subject in the months after she and Luke had returned.

Now Rory was seeing it for herself, and other than being slightly shocked at how graphic her grandmother could get during her museum presentation, she remained pale, tight-lipped, and distracted. Luke and Lorelai exchanged worried looks during most of the afternoon, but Lorelai sensed that the sooner Rory could unload the burden she'd been carrying for the past few months, the better it would be for all of them. Lorelai was used to her relationship with her mother being strained and wrought with tension, but she didn't want that for Rory, and it couldn't be healthy for Rory or the baby to continue carrying on like this.

After supper, Luke, Lorelai, and Emily were seated in front of the fireplace with their respective alcoholic beverages. Rory gingerly sipped at a glass of water, having changed into a maternity dress that revealed exactly nothing. Lorelai nervously eyed the clock, hoping that Rory wouldn't chicken out of the purpose for this trip.

Emily cut to the chase quickly.

"As much as I've enjoyed having you here along with the newlyweds, I know there was probably a specific reason you gathered us all here today. Do you care to enlighten us on what it is?"

Rory nervously gathered the edges of her skirt in her hands. "I will, Grandma."

Emily arched an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue.

"I wanted to let you know about what I've been working on over the past few months," Rory began, briefly catching her mother's eye before continuing. "I know that you know I've been living with Mom since the spring, and I've worked on the newspaper in Stars Hollow, but I've also been spending a lot of time working on a . . . a book."

"A book? What kind of book?" Emily asked.

"It's a book about Mom and me," Rory said, her voice slightly shaking. Lorelai's gaze met Luke's briefly, and they both turned their eyes back towards Emily.

"A memoir?" Emily asked.

"Exactly," Rory continued, and her voice began to rise in confidence. "It's about Mom and me, and how we grew up, and a little bit of it is about her life before I was born. There's a lot in there about reconnecting with you and Grandpa, and how we started bonding over certain things, and about what it was like going to Chilton and preparing to go to Yale. I've changed a lot of details and names, but I've been working really hard on it over the past couple of months, and I'm hoping to be finished by the summer."

Emily sipped at her champagne, remaining poker-faced. "Does your father know about this?"

"He does," Rory confirmed. "He gave his approval fairly early on. He's not in the book much, though. About half of it is about Stars Hollow and the other half is about Yale and Chilton and you and Grandpa. Luke's got a much bigger part to play in it than Dad does."

Luke's turned toward Rory, momentarily touched. He'd already had his personal life thrust into print years ago courtesy of Jess, so he hadn't been concerned about whatever Rory would share about his part in her life. He hadn't even really bothered to consider that he would be a major part of it up until this moment.

Lorelai reached out to grasp his hand, and he squeezed it in acknowledgement. He sensed that this was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him.

"This book," Emily said. "Do you have any plans for it? A publisher?"

"Y-yes," Rory said, her gaze drifting over to Luke and Lorelai before she focused again on her grandmother. She seemed a little perturbed by the way that Emily wasn't reacting at all to the actual subject matter of the book.

Lorelai was perturbed, too. When she first heard about the book, her reaction had been to freeze Rory out for weeks. Yet Emily wasn't bothered by it at all?

"Jess Mariano is editing the book," Rory explained to her grandmother. "He's going to put it out on his book press. We have a contract, although I'm afraid it doesn't look like much on paper. Jess has been working with me on the book since the beginning. He seems confident about it."

Emily nodded. "I've spent some time with Jess over the years," she reminded Rory. "Not a lot, Christmas parties here and there, but he seemed fairly stable. He's written some books himself, hasn't he, Luke?"

"Two," Luke told his mother-in-law. "He mostly edits other people's work now and runs the publishing house. He's done very well for himself."

"Well, it sounds like the two of you are likely to have a very productive partnership," Emily said sharply.

Lorelai shot an incredulous look in Luke's direction. He seemed similarly shocked. That was it?

"Have you given any more thought to what kind of career goal you want to pursue after you finish this book?" Emily asked Rory. "I understand that Jess's publishing house is on the smaller side."

Lorelai opened her mouth to try to defend Jess, but closed it when she heard Luke let loose a familiar grunt.

She knew that grunt too well. It meant that he thought she should wait until Rory could defend herself on her own before she rushed to her rescue.

Half of the time Lorelai ignored it, but she kept quiet this time.

"I'm going to finish the book and see how it goes," Rory told her grandmother. "I know this book isn't going to be enough to set me up for life. I've learned that much from Jess. At the most, it could be the beginning of a different direction for me. I want to see how it pans out before I settle on anything else."

Emily nodded. "It's good to know you're being sensible about this," she said. "I only request that you don't use my name or Richard's, and that you change some of the identifying details about who we are or where we come from. If people are curious, they can look around and find out the truth, but I don't want to make it easy for them. Does that sound fair?"

"It does," Rory agreed. "I'm not going to name Chilton, and I've already changed a lot of details about some of the things that happened there."

"I'd appreciate it if you did the same for the places where your parents went to high school as well," Emily suggested to Rory. "I also request that I be allowed to read the book before it's published."

"I'm amenable to that," Rory agreed. "I'm so glad you're okay with this, Grandma. I've been really worried about what you would think."

"Well, I've been told I've gotten more flexible in the past couple of years," Emily said as she got up to refill her glass of champagne. "I think it benefits all of us to be on the same page when it comes to something like this."

"It does," Rory concurred as her grandmother sat back down. "But the book isn't the only reason I wanted us all to come here."

Lorelai looked nervously at Luke, and he squeezed her hand in reassurance.

Whatever came next, they were here to support Rory. That was all that mattered.

"What else did you have to tell me, Rory?" Emily asked.

Rory took a deep breath, and calmly looked her grandmother in the eye.

"Grandma, I'm pregnant."

The silence thickened around them as the flames flickered quietly in the fireplace.


End file.
